Baudrillard's contribution is specifically from his early period; the work on consumption and the sign. The later Baudrillard; simulation, hyperreality; is a different project and less relevant here. The System of Objects (1968) and For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972) provide a rigorous framework for understanding how products function as signs in a system; not just as useful objects but as elements in a differential structure where what they mean is determined by their relation to everything else. His analysis of how consumption is fundamentally an activity of sign manipulation; how people consume meanings, not objects; is the theoretical underpinning for the claim that the symbolic product precedes the functional product in terms of experienced value. Baudrillard also provides the framework for understanding how status and identity are constructed through consumption; how the Mogami cable is purchased not because it sounds better, but because it means something about the kind of person who uses it. This is the theoretical foundation for the identity component of the user fantasy frame.