Consumerism


Consumerism is a socio-cultural and economic phenomenon that is typical of industrialized societies. It is characterized by the continuous acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing quantities. In contemporary consumer society, the purchase and the consumption of products have evolved beyond the mere satisfaction of basic human needs, transforming into an activity that is not only economic but also cultural, social, and even identity-forming. It emerged in Western Europe and the United States during the Industrial Revolution and became widespread around the 20th century. In economics, consumerism refers to policies that emphasize consumption. It is the consideration that the free choice of consumers should strongly inform the choice by manufacturers of what is produced and how, and therefore influence the economic organization of a society.
Consumerism has been criticized by both individuals who choose other ways of participating in the economy and environmentalists concerned about its impact on the planet. Experts often assert that consumerism has physical limits, such as growth imperative and overconsumption, which have larger impacts on the environment. This includes direct effects like overexploitation of natural resources or large amounts of waste from disposable goods and significant effects like climate change. Similarly, some research and criticism focuses on the sociological effects of consumerism, such as reinforcement of class barriers and creation of inequalities.

Evolution of the term

The term "consumerism" has several definitions. These definitions may not be related to each other and they conflict with each other.
In a 1955 speech, John Bugas, a vice president of the Ford Motor Company, coined the term "consumerism" as a substitute for "capitalism" and better describe the American economy:
Bugas's definition aligned with Austrian economics founder Carl Menger's conception of consumer sovereignty, as laid out in his 1871 book Principles of Economics, whereby consumer preferences, valuations, and choices control the economy entirely. This view stood in direct opposition to Karl Marx's critique of the capitalist economy as a system of exploitation.
For social critic Vance Packard, however, "consumerism" was not a positive term about consumer practices but rather a negative term, meaning excessive materialism and wastefulness. In the advertisements for his 1960 book The Waste Makers, the word "consumerism" was prominently featured in a negative way.
One sense of the term relates to efforts to support consumers' interests. By the early 1970s it had become the accepted term for the field and began to be used in these ways:
  1. Consumerism is the concept that consumers should be informed decision makers in the marketplace. In this sense consumerism is the study and practice of matching consumers with trustworthy information, such as product testing reports.
  2. Consumerism is the concept that the marketplace itself is responsible for ensuring social justice through fair economic practices. Consumer protection policies and laws compel manufacturers to make products safe.
  3. Consumerism refers to the field of studying, regulating, or interacting with the marketplace. The consumer movement is the social movement which refers to all actions and all entities within the marketplace which give consideration to the consumer.
While the above definitions were becoming established, other people began using the term consumerism to mean "high levels of consumption". This definition has gained popularity since the 1970s and began to be used in these ways:
  1. Consumerism is the selfish and frivolous collecting of products, or economic materialism. In this sense consumerism is negative and in opposition to positive lifestyles of anti-consumerism and simple living.
  2. Consumerism is a force from the marketplace which destroys individuality and harms society. It is related to globalization and in protest against this some people promote the "anti-globalization movement".

    History

Origins

The consumer society developed throughout the late 17th century and the 18th century. Peck addresses the assertion made by consumption scholars about writers such as "Nicholas Barbon and Bernard Mandeville" in "Luxury and War: Reconsidering Luxury Consumption in Seventeenth-Century England" and how their emphasis on the financial worth of luxury changed society's perceptions of luxury. They argue that a significant transformation occurred in the eighteenth century when the focus shifted from court-centered luxury spending to consumer-driven luxury consumption, which was fueled by middle-class purchases of new products.
The English economy expanded significantly in the 17th century due to new methods of agriculture that rendered it feasible to cultivate a larger area. A time of heightened demand for luxury goods and increased cultural interaction was reflected in the wide range of luxury products that the aristocracy and affluent merchants imported from nations like Italy and the Low Countries. This expansion of luxury consumption in England was facilitated by state policies that encouraged cultural borrowing and import substitution, hence enabling the purchase of luxury items. Luxury goods included sugar, tobacco, tea, and coffee; these were increasingly grown on vast plantations in the Caribbean as demand steadily rose. In particular, sugar consumption in Britain increased by a factor of 20 during the 18th century.
Furthermore, the non-importation movement commenced in the 18th century, more precisely from 1764 to 1776, as Witkowski's article "Colonial Consumers in Revolt: Buyer Values and Behavior during the Nonimportation Movement, 1764–1776" discusses. He describes the evolving development of consumer culture in the context of "colonial America". An emphasis on efficiency and economical consumption gave way to a preference for comfort, convenience, and importing products. During this time of transformation, colonial consumers had to choose between rising material desires and conventional values.

Culture of consumption

The pattern of intensified consumption became particularly visible in the 17th century in London, where the gentry and prosperous merchants took up residence and promoted a culture of luxury and consumption that slowly extended across socio-economic boundaries. Marketplaces expanded as shopping centres, such as the New Exchange, opened in 1609 by Robert Cecil in the Strand. Shops started to become important as places for Londoners to meet and socialize and became popular destinations alongside the theatre. From 1660, Restoration London also saw the growth of luxury buildings as advertisements for social position, with speculative architects like Nicholas Barbon and Lionel Cranfield operating. This then-scandalous line of thought caused great controversy with the publication of the influential work Fable of the Bees in 1714, in which Bernard Mandeville argued that a country's prosperity ultimately lay in the self-interest of the consumer.
The pottery entrepreneur and inventor, Josiah Wedgwood, noticed the way that aristocratic fashions, themselves subject to periodic changes in direction, slowly filtered down through different classes of society. He pioneered the use of marketing techniques to influence and manipulate the movement of prevailing tastes and preferences to cause the aristocracy to accept his goods; it was only a matter of time before the middle classes also rapidly bought up his goods. Other producers of a wide range of other products followed his example, and the spread and importance of consumption fashions became steadily more important. Since then, advertising has played a major role in fostering a consumerist society, marketing goods through various platforms in nearly all aspects of human life, and pushing the message that the potential customer's personal life requires some product.

Mass production

The Industrial Revolution dramatically increased the availability of consumer goods, although it was still primarily focused on the capital goods sector and industrial infrastructure. The advent of the department store represented a paradigm shift in the experience of shopping. Customers could now buy an astonishing variety of goods, all in one place, and shopping became a popular leisure activity. While previously the norm had been the scarcity of resources, the industrial era created an unprecedented economic situation. For the first time in history products were available in outstanding quantities, at outstandingly low prices, therefore available to virtually everyone in the industrialized West.
By the turn of the 20th century, the average worker in Western Europe or the United States still spent approximately 80–90% of their income on food and other necessities. What was needed to propel consumerism, was a system of mass production and consumption, exemplified by Henry Ford, an American car manufacturer. After observing the assembly lines in the meat-packing industry, Frederick Winslow Taylor brought his theory of scientific management to the organization of the assembly line in other industries; this unleashed incredible productivity and reduced the costs of commodities produced on assembly lines around the world.
File:DCUSA.Gallery10.TargetBlackFriday.Wikipedia.jpg|thumb|Black Friday shoppers, DC USA
Consumerism has long had intentional underpinnings, rather than just developing out of capitalism. As an example, Earnest Elmo Calkins noted to fellow advertising executives in 1932 that "consumer engineering must see to it that we use up the kind of goods we now merely use", while the domestic theorist Christine Frederick observed in 1929 that "the way to break the vicious deadlock of a low standard of living is to spend freely, and even waste creatively".
The older term and concept of "conspicuous consumption" originated at the turn of the 20th century in the writings of sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen. The term describes an apparently irrational and confounding form of economic behaviour. Veblen's scathing proposal that this unnecessary consumption is a form of status display is made in darkly humorous observations like the following:
The term "conspicuous consumption" spread to describe consumerism in the United States in the 1960s, but was soon linked to debates about media theory, culture jamming, and its corollary productivism.