A culture based on consumption

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.”

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

• The United Nations Development Programme’s (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.

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

Features of materialism

• Desire to own things that does not reflect actual need (wants)

• Dissatisfaction with one’s 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

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?

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

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”

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. 

Stuart Ewen• The development of manufacturing capacity in

excess of native want created a demand for a force that would teach people to consume—to 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

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

Schudson

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

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

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.

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

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

• 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 can’t buy happiness”?

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.

• “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

• Rarely does social action predate disaster.– Need to hope for “small disaster”