A culture based on consumption

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A culture based on consumption
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Consumption culture

• David Potter has called modern American
  advertising the institution of abundance
• He states, It dominates the media, it has vast
  power in the shaping of popular standards, and it
  is really one of the very limited group of
  institutions which exercise social control.

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Americans and the consumption of natural resources

• US residents consume at a level unprecedented in
  human history
• Living at a level reserved for the rich in the
  past
• Mass prosperity
• Huge levels of waste

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• The United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP)
  Human Development Report 1998 (HDR 1998) provides
  some of the most striking statistics
• The ratios of consumption levels of 20 percent of
  the people who live in the richest countries to
  the 20 percent who live in the poorest countries
  are 
• Eleven times for meat,
• Seventeen times for energy,
• Seven times for fish,
• Forty-nine times for telephone lines,
• One hundred forty five times for cars, and 
• Sixteen times in the overall.

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What are the outcomes?

• Huge waste
• Garbage
• Pollution
• Resource depletion
• Domestic unrest
• International conflict
• Happiness? (high standard of living)
• Worldly population
• Investment in consumables rather than capital

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Features of materialism

• Desire to own things that does not reflect actual
  need (wants)
• Dissatisfaction with ones current material
  conditions
• Jealousy toward those with greater levels of
  material wealth
• Willingness to exchange non-material values for
  material values
• Evaluation of others based on their material
  wealth

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Where does materialism come from?

• Nature?
• Is it natural to want more than you need?
• Nurture?
• If so, what in the culture leads to a materialist
  attitude?

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Themes of advertising

• You are inadequate
• Products exist to make you better
• You will be admired for owning something
• Commodities can make you happy
• They solve your problems
• They make up for your inadequacies
• Consumption is a competition
• Whoever has the most stuff when he dies, wins

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Export of consumption ideology

• Countries that are receiving Western media images
  and advertising experience an increase in
  wasteful consumption
• Revolution of rising expectations
• Even in poor countries, the population expects
  greater levels of consumer goods, lifestyle
  improvement
• May contribute to Third World instability

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Center for Sustainable Production and
Consumption,1999)  

• Advertising, though not targeted  as  such,  does
  influence the very poor (the destitutes) to
  forsake some of their basic needs and buy/choose
  commodities not required immediately.
  In villages across India we can find TV sets
  that  run on generators (as there is no regular
  electricity supply)  but  no such  arrangement
  that village children may read or write in  the
  evenings.  Even  the very poor of the villages
  get to see (and enjoy) the programmes and the
  advertisements on these TV sets and make slow
  changes in their consumption patterns. 

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Stuart Ewen

• The development of manufacturing capacity in
  excess of native want created a demand for a
  force that would teach people to consumeto use
  up the excess capacity.
• Advertising was developed to provide that
  education
• Consumption levels that were reserved for the
  rich were now expanding to include the middle
  class.
• Fashion industry
• Planned obsolescence
• Manufactured wants

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Consumer socialization

• Children are taught how to consume at a very
  early age
• Advertising to young children
• In-school advertising
• Peer evaluation based on physical appearance,
  branded clothes, etc.
• Parents emphasis on material goods

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Schudson

• We have always wanted to consume at high levels,
  but economic scarcity has frustrated us

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How does commercial communication lead to
consumption ethic?

• Takes real problems and proposes profit-based
  solutions to them
• Headache Best solution, lie down till it goes
  away (though migraine may be another matter)
• Turns natural conditions into a problem
• Human smells, wrinkles
• Makes individual feel inadequate, proposes a
  solution based on a purchase
• Excessive narcissism
• Skin not perfect
• Eyebrow hair continues over nose
• Figure
• Hair

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Stay Free! (no author, date)

• What these explanations miss, however, is that
  the forces behind ambient are inherent in the
  advertising process. Advertising works somewhat
  like bacteria After its hosts (consumers) are
  exposed, they become immune, so new strains of
  ads must develop and grow. These new strains are
  quickly copied, adding clutter, requiring new
  strains to emerge. Over time, advertising clutter
  leads to diminishing returns for individual
  campaigns. The more advertising grows, the more
  it must grow. The cycle accelerates and what was
  formerly considered unethical, offensive, or
  gauche is gradually mainstreamed out of
  necessity.

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The invasion of the sacred by the profane

• Even sacred parts of our culture and our lives
  have been colonized by the marketing imperative
• Jesus jeans
• The use of sacred symbols in advertising
• Marketing in the schools
• Marketing strategy for political campaigns
• Marketing strategy for fundraising for good works
• The commercialization of art
• Painting
• Music
• Cinema
• Stage

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Pre-packaged personalities

• Cues for individual behavior drawn from
  communications aimed at selling
• Image advertising
• Image-conscious consumers
• Cultural promotion of image-consciousness
• You are what you wear
• Transfer of brand image to brand wearer/purchaser
• Transformation of consumption experience
  according to brand image

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• Is there a loss of authentic, meaningful life?
• Communication and expression that are not tied to
  commerce?
• Individual meaning and expression that has
  nothing to do with conspicuous consumption?
• The things people say they want may not be things
  we can purchase.
• Is it true that Money cant buy happiness?

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Resistance

• The consumption ethic has become an area of
  concern in relatively recent times
• AdBusters, Cultural Environment Movement
• Actions taken
• Buy Nothing Day
• Culture jamming
• Boycotts, etc.

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• Dont it always seem to go that you dont know
  what youve got till its gone?
• Rarely does social action predate disaster.
• Need to hope for small disaster

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