Consumer movement
The consumer movement is an effort to promote consumer protection through an organized social movement, which is in many places led by consumer organizations. It advocates for the rights of consumers, especially when those rights are actively breached by the actions of corporations, governments, and other organizations that provide products and services to consumers.
Consumer movements also commonly advocate for increased health and safety standards, honest information about products in advertising, and consumer representation in political bodies.
Term
The terms "consumer movement" and "consumerism" are not equivalent. The traditional use of the term "consumerism" is still practiced by contemporary consumer organizations refers to advancing consumer protection and can include legislators passing consumer protection laws, regulators policing these laws, educators who teach consumer policy, product testers who measure the extent to which products meet standards. These cooperative organizations supply products and services mindfully of consumer interest, as well as the consumer movement itself. The term "consumer movement" refers to only nonprofit advocacy groups and grassroots activism to promote consumer interest by reforming the practices of corporations or policies of the government, so the "consumer movement" is a subset of the discipline of "consumerism".In the 1960s in the United States lobbyists of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Retail Federation began using the term "consumerism" to refer to the consumer movement in a derogatory and antagonistic way. This was an attempt to denigrate the general movement and the work of Esther Peterson in her role as Special Assistant to the President for Consumer Affairs. Since that time, other people have confounded the term "consumerism" with the concepts of commercialism and materialism. Still, other people use "consumerism" to refer to a philosophy that the ever-expanding consumption of products is advantageous to the economy, and they contrast consumerism with the modern term "anti-consumerism" in opposition to the practice of over-consumption.
Ideological foundations
Among the people whose ideas formed the basis of what became the consumer movement are the following:- Thorstein Veblen, for introducing theories of advertising and the concept of conspicuous consumption
- Ellen Swallow Richards, for pioneering home economics as a science
- Herbert Hoover, for demanding product testing and a need for technical standards for products
- Upton Sinclair, for raising public interest in consumer protection
- Florence Kelley, for leading the National Consumers League
- Ralph Nader, for raising public awareness concerning automotive safety.
United States
Overview
Early corporate opposition
During the Recession of 1937–1938, public confidence in business was low and the new criticism from consumer groups weakened trust in advertising, media, and branded goods. The idea that the public were the "guinea pigs" on whom corporations tested products was an idea which spread after the publication of 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs, and industry sought to counter it and the general concept of consumer regulation over industry to restore market confidence. In 1938, Hearst Corporation ran an advertisement suggesting that people who purchase goods which were nationally distributed and advertised were not "guinea pigs", and from 1934 to 1939, Collier-Crowell executive Anna Steese Richardson toured to readers of Woman's Home Companion as an opponent of consumer groups and an advocate of corporate-managed equivalents of consumer organizations. To compete with grassroots efforts, various other corporate interests likewise set up their own consumer information centers, including New York Herald Tribunes product-testing institute, McCall's institute explicitly designed to counter Consumers Union and Consumers' Research, Sears consumer outreach lectures, N. W. Ayer & Son's Institute on Consumer Relations, and Macy's Bureau of Standards Fulton Oursler of Macfadden Publications published stories in True Story and Liberty which praised advertising and denounced the consumer movement, and which George Sokolsky used as the basis for writing an "anti-guinea pig" book, The American Way of Life.In response to the trend of corporate movement into the field of consumer regulation of the marketplace, Robert Staughton Lynd spoke for consumer advocacy, stating that "the whole consumer movement can be aborted if the present plans of manufacturing and retailing trade associations to set up... consumer pressure groups allowed to go forward unchecked." Eventually, industry and companies began to portray citizens and organizations who criticized corporations as un-American and Communist. Conservative business interests attempted to correlate traditional American values such as freedom with advertising while making Communist threats against consumer organizations and the consumer movement as a whole. Though these attacks were widespread, they were not generally successful in convincing the general public that consumer activism was a Communist plot, at least at the end of the 1930s. In the next two decades, the American public began to take "red-baiting" much more seriously.
Second consumer movement
Beginning in the 1960s–70s, scholars began to recognize "waves" of consumer activism, and much of the academic research on the consumer movement sorted it into "three waves of consumer activism". The first wave occurred at the start of the 20th century, the second wave in the 1920s and 1930s, and the third wave from the 1960s to the 1970s.A number of factors contributed to the rise of the second consumer movement in the 1930s. The consumer activism of the early 1900s served as a foundation for the consumer movement that would follow in the 1930s and 1940s. The Great Depression also played a key role in igniting consumer concerns. As household finances grew tighter and consumers began to more carefully examine their commodities, Americans began to realize their poor quality and fraudulent advertising. American consumers relied on contemporary publications such as Your Money's Worth and 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs to expose fraud and misinformation from manufacturers and call for impartial product testing. These spawned consumer publications such as Consumers' Research and Consumers' Union which dedicated themselves to research and product testing to inform the consuming public. As these studies and exposes came to light, widespread support of a consumer's movement began to emerge. This included calls for higher food and commodity standards, consumer representation, and consumer education to teach responsible economic habits, as well as increased membership in consumer organizations, strikes, and consumer boycotts. Even those who opposed the second consumer movement, such as manufacturers and business professionals, began to recognize, in Lawrence B. Glickman's words, the "growing consumer consciousness" of the era. The broad interest in consumer issues led to several pieces of legislation being passed to create greater protections of quality and against fraudulent advertising, such the Tugwell Bill of 1933 which spawned more than a dozen other bills, like the Wheeler-Lea Act and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Women's groups in particular were influential in lobbying during the drafting of these reform bills.