essay about consumer culture

A Brief History of Consumer Culture

The notion of human beings as consumers first took shape before World War I, but became commonplace in America in the 1920s. Consumption is now frequently seen as our principal role in the world.

People, of course, have always “consumed” the necessities of life — food, shelter, clothing — and have always had to work to get them or have others work for them, but there was little economic motive for increased consumption among the mass of people before the 20th century.

Quite the reverse: Frugality and thrift were more appropriate to situations where survival rations were not guaranteed. Attempts to promote new fashions, harness the “propulsive power of envy,” and boost sales multiplied in Britain in the late 18th century. Here began the “slow unleashing of the acquisitive instincts,” write historians Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb in their influential book on the commercialization of 18th-century England, when the pursuit of opulence and display first extended beyond the very rich.

But, while poorer people might have acquired a very few useful household items — a skillet, perhaps, or an iron pot — the sumptuous clothing, furniture, and pottery of the era were still confined to a very small population. In late 19th-century Britain a variety of foods became accessible to the average person, who would previously have lived on bread and potatoes — consumption beyond mere subsistence. This improvement in food variety did not extend durable items to the mass of people, however. The proliferating shops and department stores of that period served only a restricted population of urban middle-class people in Europe, but the display of tempting products in shops in daily public view was greatly extended — and display was a key element in the fostering of fashion and envy.

Although the period after World War II is often identified as the beginning of the immense eruption of consumption across the industrialized world, the historian William Leach locates its roots in the United States around the turn of the century.

In the United States, existing shops were rapidly extended through the 1890s, mail-order shopping surged, and the new century saw massive multistory department stores covering millions of acres of selling space. Retailing was already passing decisively from small shopkeepers to corporate giants who had access to investment bankers and drew on assembly-line production of commodities, powered by fossil fuels; the traditional objective of making products for their self-evident usefulness was displaced by the goal of profit and the need for a machinery of enticement.

“The cardinal features of this culture were acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society,” Leach writes in his 1993 book “ Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture .” Significantly, it was individual desire that was democratized, rather than wealth or political and economic power.

The 1920s: “The New Economic Gospel of Consumption”

Release from the perils of famine and premature starvation was in place for most people in the industrialized world soon after the Great War ended. U.S. production was more than 12 times greater in 1920 than in 1860, while the population over the same period had increased by only a factor of three, suggesting just how much additional wealth was theoretically available. The labor struggles of the 19th century had, without jeopardizing the burgeoning productivity, gradually eroded the seven-day week of 14- and 16-hour days that was worked at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England. In the United States in particular, economic growth had succeeded in providing basic security to the great majority of an entire population.

It would be feasible to reduce hours of work and release workers for the pleasurable activities of free time with families and communities, but business did not support such a trajectory.

In these circumstances, there was a social choice to be made. A steady-state economy capable of meeting the basic needs of all, foreshadowed by philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill as the stationary state , seemed well within reach and, in Mill’s words, likely to be an improvement on “the trampling, crushing, elbowing and treading on each other’s heels … the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.” It would be feasible to reduce hours of work further and release workers for the spiritual and pleasurable activities of free time with families and communities, and creative or educational pursuits. But business did not support such a trajectory, and it was not until the Great Depression that hours were reduced, in response to overwhelming levels of unemployment.

In 1930 the U.S. cereal manufacturer Kellogg adopted a six-hour shift to help accommodate unemployed workers, and other forms of work-sharing became more widespread. Although the shorter workweek appealed to Kellogg’s workers, the company, after reverting to longer hours during World War II, was reluctant to renew the six-hour shift in 1945. Workers voted for it by three-to-one in both 1945 and 1946, suggesting that, at the time, they still found life in their communities more attractive than consumer goods. This was particularly true of women. Kellogg, however, gradually overcame the resistance of its workers and whittled away at the short shifts until the last of them were abolished in 1985.

Even if a shorter working day became an acceptable strategy during the Great Depression, the economic system’s orientation toward profit and its bias toward growth made such a trajectory unpalatable to most captains of industry and the economists who theorized their successes. If profit and growth were lagging, the system needed new impetus. The short depression of 1921–1922 led businessmen and economists in the United States to fear that the immense productive powers created over the previous century had grown sufficiently to meet the basic needs of the entire population and had probably triggered a permanent crisis of overproduction; prospects for further economic expansion were thought to look bleak.

The historian Benjamin Hunnicutt, who examined the mainstream press of the 1920s, along with the publications of corporations, business organizations, and government inquiries, found extensive evidence that such fears were widespread in business circles during the 1920s. Victor Cutter, president of the United Fruit Company, exemplified the concern when he wrote in 1927 that the greatest economic problem of the day was the lack of “consuming power” in relation to the prodigious powers of production.

“Unless [the consumer] could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, super heterodynes, cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets.”

Notwithstanding the panic and pessimism, a consumer solution was simultaneously emerging. As the popular historian of the time Frederick Allen wrote , “Business had learned as never before the importance of the ultimate consumer. Unless he could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, super heterodynes, cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets.” In his classic 1928 book “ Propaganda ,” Edward Bernays, one of the pioneers of the public relations industry, put it this way:

Mass production is profitable only if its rhythm can be maintained—that is if it can continue to sell its product in steady or increasing quantity.… Today supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand … [and] cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda … to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable.

Edward Cowdrick, an economist who advised corporations on their management and industrial relations policies, called it “the new economic gospel of consumption,” in which workers (people for whom durable possessions had rarely been a possibility) could be educated in the new “skills of consumption.”

It was an idea also put forward by the new “consumption economists” such as Hazel Kyrk and Theresa McMahon, and eagerly embraced by many business leaders. New needs would be created, with advertising brought into play to “augment and accelerate” the process. People would be encouraged to give up thrift and husbandry, to value goods over free time. Kyrk argued for ever-increasing aspirations: “a high standard of living must be dynamic, a progressive standard,” where envy of those just above oneself in the social order incited consumption and fueled economic growth.

President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes welcomed the demonstration “on a grand scale [of] the expansibility of human wants and desires,” hailed an “almost insatiable appetite for goods and services,” and envisaged “a boundless field before us … new wants that make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.” In this paradigm, people are encouraged to board an escalator of desires (a stairway to heaven, perhaps) and progressively ascend to what were once the luxuries of the affluent.

Charles Kettering, general director of General Motors Research Laboratories, equated such perpetual change with progress. In a 1929 article called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied,” he stated that “there is no place anyone can sit and rest in an industrial situation. It is a question of change, change all the time — and it is always going to be that way because the world only goes along one road, the road of progress.” These views parallel political economist Joseph Schumpeter’s later characterization of capitalism as “creative destruction”:

Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is, but never can be stationary .… The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers, goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.

The prospect of ever-extendable consumer desire, characterized as “progress,” promised a new way forward for modern manufacture, a means to perpetuate economic growth. Progress was about the endless replacement of old needs with new, old products with new. Notions of meeting everyone’s needs with an adequate level of production did not feature.

The nonsettler European colonies were not regarded as viable venues for these new markets, since centuries of exploitation and impoverishment meant that few people there were able to pay. In the 1920s, the target consumer market to be nourished lay at home in the industrialized world. There, especially in the United States, consumption continued to expand through the 1920s, though truncated by the Great Depression of 1929.

Electrification was crucial for the consumption of the new types of durable items, and the fraction of U.S. households with electricity connected nearly doubled between 1921 and 1929, from 35 percent to 68 percent; a rapid proliferation of radios, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators followed. Motor car registration rose from eight million in 1920 to more than 28 million by 1929. The introduction of time payment arrangements facilitated the extension of such buying further and further down the economic ladder. In Australia, too, the trend could be observed; there, however, the base was tiny, and even though car ownership multiplied nearly fivefold in the eight years to 1929, few working-class households possessed cars or large appliances before 1945.

The prospect of ever-extendable consumer desire, characterized as “progress,” promised a new way forward for modern manufacture, a means to perpetuate economic growth.

This first wave of consumerism was short-lived. Predicated on debt, it took place in an economy mired in speculation and risky borrowing. U.S. consumer credit rose to $7 billion in the 1920s, with banks engaged in reckless lending of all kinds. Indeed, though a lot less in gross terms than the burden of debt in the United States in late 2008, which Sydney economist Steve Keen has described as “the biggest load of unsuccessful gambling in history,” the debt of the 1920s was very large, over 200 percent of the GDP of the time. In both eras, borrowed money bought unprecedented quantities of material goods on time payment and (these days) credit cards. The 1920s bonanza collapsed suddenly and catastrophically. In 2008, a similar unraveling began; its implications still remain unknown. In the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, a war economy followed, so it was almost 20 years before mass consumption resumed any role in economic life — or in the way the economy was conceived.

The Second Wave

Once World War II was over, consumer culture took off again throughout the developed world, partly fueled by the deprivation of the Great Depression and the rationing of the wartime years and incited with renewed zeal by corporate advertisers using debt facilities and the new medium of television. Stuart Ewen, in his history of the public relations industry, saw the birth of commercial radio in 1921 as a vital tool in the great wave of debt-financed consumption in the 1920s — “a privately owned utility, pumping information and entertainment into people’s homes.”

“Requiring no significant degree of literacy on the part of its audience,” Ewen writes, “radio gave interested corporations … unprecedented access to the inner sanctums of the public mind.” The advent of television greatly magnified the potential impact of advertisers’ messages, exploiting image and symbol far more adeptly than print and radio had been able to do. The stage was set for the democratization of luxury on a scale hitherto unimagined.

Though the television sets that carried the advertising into people’s homes after World War II were new, and were far more powerful vehicles of persuasion than radio had been, the theory and methods were the same — perfected in the 1920s by PR experts like Bernays. Vance Packard echoes both Bernays and the consumption economists of the 1920s in his description of the role of the advertising men of the 1950s:

They want to put some sizzle into their messages by stirring up our status consciousness.… Many of the products they are trying to sell have, in the past, been confined to a “quality market.” The products have been the luxuries of the upper classes. The game is to make them the necessities of all classes . This is done by dangling the products before non-upper-class people as status symbols of a higher class. By striving to buy the product—say, wall-to-wall carpeting on instalment—the consumer is made to feel he is upgrading himself socially.

Though it is status that is being sold, it is endless material objects that are being consumed.

In a little-known 1958 essay reflecting on the conservation implications of the conspicuously wasteful U.S. consumer binge after World War II, John Kenneth Galbraith pointed to the possibility that this “gargantuan and growing appetite” might need to be curtailed. “What of the appetite itself?,” he asks. “Surely this is the ultimate source of the problem. If it continues its geometric course, will it not one day have to be restrained? Yet in the literature of the resource problem this is the forbidden question.”

“We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate,” retail analyst Victor Lebow remarked in 1955.

Galbraith quotes the President’s Materials Policy Commission setting out its premise that economic growth is sacrosanct. “First we share the belief of the American people in the principle of Growth,” the report maintains, specifically endorsing “ever more luxurious standards of consumption.” To Galbraith, who had just published “ The Affluent Society ,” the wastefulness he observed seemed foolhardy, but he was pessimistic about curtailment; he identified the beginnings of “a massive conservative reaction to the idea of enlarged social guidance and control of economic activity,” a backlash against the state taking responsibility for social direction. At the same time he was well aware of the role of advertising: “Goods are plentiful. Demand for them must be elaborately contrived,” he wrote. “Those who create wants rank amongst our most talented and highly paid citizens. Want creation — advertising — is a ten billion dollar industry.”

Or, as retail analyst Victor Lebow remarked in 1955:

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.… We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.

Thus, just as immense effort was being devoted to persuading people to buy things they did not actually need, manufacturers also began the intentional design of inferior items, which came to be known as “planned obsolescence.” In his second major critique of the culture of consumption, “ The Waste Makers ,” Packard identified both functional obsolescence, in which the product wears out quickly and psychological obsolescence, in which products are “designed to become obsolete in the mind of the consumer, even sooner than the components used to make them will fail.”

Galbraith was alert to the way that rapidly expanding consumption patterns were multiplied by a rapidly expanding population. But postwar industrial enterprise stoked the expansion nonetheless. The rise of consumer debt, interrupted in 1929, also resumed. In Australia, the 1939 debt of AU$39 million doubled in the first two years after the war and, by 1960, had grown by a factor of 25, to more than AU$1 billion dollars. This new burst in debt-financed consumerism was, again, incited intentionally.

Tapping into the Unconscious: Image and Message

In researching his excellent history of the rise of PR, Ewen interviewed Bernays himself in 1990, not long before he turned 99. Ewen found Bernays, a key pioneer of the new PR profession, to be just as candid about his underlying motivations as he had been in 1928 when he wrote “Propaganda”:

Throughout our conversation, Bernays conveyed his hallucination of democracy: A highly educated class of opinion-molding tacticians is continuously at work … adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind, with its limited intellect, derives its opinions.… Throughout the interview, he described PR as a response to a transhistoric concern: the requirement, for those people in power, to shape the attitudes of the general population.

Bernays’s views, like those of several other analysts of the “crowd” and the “herd instinct,” were a product of the panic created among the elite classes by the early 20th-century transition from the limited franchise of propertied men to universal suffrage. “On every side of American life, whether political, industrial, social, religious or scientific, the increasing pressure of public judgment has made itself felt,” Bernays wrote. “The great corporation which is in danger of having its profits taxed away or its sales fall off or its freedom impeded by legislative action must have recourse to the public to combat successfully these menaces.”

The opening page of “Propaganda” discloses his solution:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.… It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

The front-line thinkers of the emerging advertising and public relations industries turned to the key insights of Sigmund Freud, Bernays’s uncle. As Bernays noted:

Many of man’s thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which [he] has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired, not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself … because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success.

Bernays saw himself as a “propaganda specialist,” a “public relations counsel,” and PR as a more sophisticated craft than advertising as such; it was directed at hidden desires and subconscious urges of which its targets would be unaware. Bernays and his colleagues were anxious to offer their services to corporations and were instrumental in founding an entire industry that has since operated along these lines, selling not only corporate commodities but also opinions on a great range of social, political, economic, and environmental issues.

Though it has become fashionable in recent decades to brand scholars and academics as elites who pour scorn on ordinary people, Bernays and the sociologist Gustave Le Bon were long ago arguing, on behalf of business and political elites, respectively, that the mass of people are incapable of thought.

According to Le Bon, “A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first”; crowds “can only comprehend rough-and-ready associations of ideas,” leading to “the utter powerlessness of reasoning when it has to fight against sentiment.” Bernays and his PR colleagues believed ordinary people to be incapable of logical thought, let alone mastery of “abstruse economic, political and ethical data,” and saw the need to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it”; PR could thus ensure the maintenance of order and corporate control in society.

Bernays and his PR colleagues believed ordinary people to be incapable of logical thought, let alone mastery of “abstruse economic, political and ethical data.”

The commodification of reality and the manufacture of demand have had serious implications for the construction of human beings in the late 20th century, where, to quote philosopher Herbert Marcuse, “people recognize themselves in their commodities.” Marcuse’s critique of needs, made more than 50 years ago, was not directed at the issues of scarce resources or ecological waste, although he was aware even at that time that Marx was insufficiently critical of the continuum of progress and that there needed to be “a restoration of nature after the horrors of capitalist industrialisation have been done away with.”

Marcuse directed his critique at the way people, in the act of satisfying our aspirations, reproduce dependence on the very exploitive apparatus that perpetuates our servitude. Hours of work in the United States have been growing since 1950, along with a doubling of consumption per capita between 1950 and 1990. Marcuse suggested that this “voluntary servitude (voluntary inasmuch as it is introjected into the individual) … can be broken only through a political practice which reaches the roots of containment and contentment in the infrastructure of man [ sic ], a political practice of methodical disengagement from and refusal of the Establishment, aiming at a radical transvaluation of values.”

The difficult challenge posed by such a transvaluation is reflected in current attitudes. The Australian comedian Wendy Harmer in her 2008 ABC TV series called “Stuff” expressed irritation at suggestions that consumption is simply generated out of greed or lack of awareness:

I am very proud to have made a documentary about consumption that does not contain the usual footage of factory smokestacks, landfill tips and bulging supermarket trolleys. Instead, it features many happy human faces and all their wonderful stuff! It’s a study of a love affair as much as anything else.

In the same vein, during the Q&A after a talk given by the Australian economist Clive Hamilton at the 2006 Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, one woman spoke up about her partner’s priorities: Rather than entertain questions about any impact his possessions might be having on the environment, she said, he was determined to “go down with his gadgets.”

The capitalist system, dependent on a logic of never-ending growth from its earliest inception, confronted the plenty it created in its home states, especially the United States, as a threat to its very existence. It would not do if people were content because they felt they had enough. However over the course of the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for its “wonderful stuff.”

Kerryn Higgs is an Australian writer and historian. She is the author of “ Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet ,” from which this article is adapted.

Essay on Consumer Culture

Students are often asked to write an essay on Consumer Culture in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Consumer Culture

What is consumer culture.

Consumer culture refers to a societal belief where buying and using goods and services is considered highly important. In this culture, people believe happiness and success come from the continuous purchase of new products, often regardless of their actual need.

Roots of Consumer Culture

Impact on society.

Consumer culture impacts society in many ways. It encourages people to buy more, leading to over-consumption. This can result in waste and environmental damage. It also creates social inequality, as not everyone can afford to continuously buy new products.

Advertising and Consumer Culture

Advertising plays a big role in consumer culture. Ads promote new products and create a desire in people to buy them. They often create an image that owning a particular product will make life better, pushing people to buy more.

Consumer Culture and Identity

In conclusion, consumer culture is a complex issue with both positive and negative aspects. While it drives economic growth, it also leads to over-consumption, environmental damage, and social inequality. It’s important to be aware of these issues and make mindful buying decisions.

250 Words Essay on Consumer Culture

Understanding consumer culture.

Consumer Culture is a social pattern where buying and using goods and services is very important. It’s a way of life where people get a lot of joy from buying new things. It is also about how we show who we are through the things we buy.

The Birth of Consumer Culture

Consumer Culture started during the Industrial Revolution. This was a time when many new products were made. People started to buy more than they needed. They started to buy things to show off their wealth or status. This was the start of Consumer Culture.

The Impact of Consumer Culture

Consumer Culture has a big impact on our lives. It affects how we think and feel about ourselves. It can make us want to buy things even when we don’t need them. This can lead to problems like debt and waste. It also affects the planet because making and throwing away products can harm the environment.

Consumer Culture and Advertising

Advertising plays a big role in Consumer Culture. It makes us want to buy more. It does this by making products look good and by making us feel like we need them. This can make us spend more than we should.

500 Words Essay on Consumer Culture

Consumer Culture is a type of culture where buying and using goods and services is a big part of people’s lives. It is a way of life where people find joy, satisfaction, and identity in what they buy. In this culture, shopping is not just about meeting needs, but it is also about showing who we are and what we like.

How Consumer Culture Came to Be

Consumer Culture did not always exist. It started during the Industrial Revolution, a time when machines were invented to make things faster and cheaper. Before this, people made most things by hand, and it took a long time. But with machines, companies could make lots of things quickly and sell them at lower prices. This made it easier for people to buy more stuff. Advertising also played a big role in shaping this culture. Ads showed people all the things they could buy and made them want to buy more.

Consumer Culture and the Environment

Consumer Culture can also impact the environment. When we buy and throw away a lot of things, it can create a lot of waste. This waste can harm the environment. For example, plastic waste can end up in the ocean and harm sea animals. Also, making things uses up natural resources like water and trees, which can harm the environment too.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Consumer Culture by Steven Miles LAST REVIEWED: 31 August 2015 LAST MODIFIED: 31 August 2015 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0135

Consumer culture is a form of material culture facilitated by the market, which thus created a particular relationship between the consumer and the goods or services he or she uses or consumes. Traditionally social science has tended to regard consumption as a trivial by-product of production. However, sociologists have increasingly come to recognize the value of studying consumer culture for its own sake. It could indeed be argued that consumer culture represents one of the primary arenas in which elements of social change are played out in everyday life. Consumer culture can be distinguished from consumption per se , insofar as it is more about the relationship between the material and the cultural rather than the status and inequalities implied by the ownership of consumer goods. In this sense consumer culture is not simply a process by which commercial products are “used up” by consumers. People’s relationship to consumer culture is meaningful and reflects, and potentially reproduces, particular values and forms of status. In this sense consumer culture arguably lies at the heart of the relationship between structure and agency in contemporary society. It demonstrates the power of capitalism to reproduce the parameters within which citizens of a consumer society live their everyday lives. Consumer culture gives us the tools to express who it is we are, but while doing so it simultaneously reinforces an economic system in which the individual’s ability to be free or to choose is, ironically, constrained. A number of texts have sought to understand the social significance of consumer culture and this ability to divide as well as to provide.

Consumer culture came to sociological prominence in the 1990s and 2000s as scholars came to recognize that consumption was significant for its own sake. This reflected broader trends such as the “Cultural Turn” and the increased focus on the cultural dimensions of post-modernity. A range of books have sought to demonstrate the significance of consumption to social change. Featherstone 1990 examines the sociological significance of the accumulation of material culture, while Ritzer 1993 looks at the way in which rationalization functions in the context of consumer culture. By utilizing a range of well-chosen extracts from a diverse range of sources, Lee 2000 pinpoints the contemporary significance of consumer culture. Meanwhile, Slater 1997 designates consumer culture as an issue intimately bound up with that of modernity, while Gabriel and Lang 1995 explores the consumer from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Lury 1996 is particularly effective on the consumption of identity in a changing world, while Nava 1991 and Sassatelli 2007 highlight the political significance of consumption.

Featherstone, Mike. 1990. Perspectives on consumer culture. Sociology 24.1: 5–22.

DOI: 10.1177/0038038590024001003

A key contribution that emphasizes the sociological significance of the accumulation of material culture. Specifically, Featherstone highlights the emergence of postmodernity, which is effectively characterized by a situation in which individuals lives appear to be more controlled by structural processes and yet freer at one and the same time.

Gabriel, Yiannis, and Tim Lang. 1995. The unmanageable consumer: Contemporary consumption and its fragmentations . London: SAGE.

Gabriel and Lang argue that the key barrier to consumer choice is money. For them contemporary society is notable for its fragmented volatility. The book considers the consumer in various guises, including that of chooser, identity-seeker, and victim and the proposition is that the more social institutions, such as industry or politicians, try to control the consumer the more unmanageable he or she becomes.

Lee, Martyn J., ed. 2000. The consumer society reader . Malden, MA: Blackwell.

This collection brings together a wide range of the key contributions to debates on the significance of consumer culture. It focuses on some of the key theoretical contributions to such debates from the work of Marx to that of Baudrillard, as well as key contributions to the discussion regarding the historical character of the consumer society from the work of Vance Packard to that of David Harvey.

Lury, Celia. 1996. Consumer culture . 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

In this volume Lury considers the ways in which an individual’s position in social groups structured by class, gender, race, and age affects the nature of his or her participation in consumer culture. Consumer culture is seen to provide new ways of creating social and political identities to the extent that consumer culture is actively redrawing questions of difference, struggle, and inequality.

Nava, Mica. 1991. Consumerism reconsidered: Buying and power. Cultural Studies 5:157–173.

DOI: 10.1080/09502389100490141

This piece critically considers the ability of consumerism to create new forms of economic, political, personal, and creative participation. Arguing that waters had previously been muddied by competing theoretical perspectives on consumerism, Nava suggests that a kind of “utopian collectivism” lies within the consumerist project, which may engender its own revolutionary seeds. Nava therefore illustrates the political complexities that are implied by the ability to consume.

Ritzer, George. 1993. The McDonaldization of society: An investigation into the changing character of contemporary social life . Newbury Park, CA: Pine Forge.

Ritzer is concerned with the way in which rationalization is played out in the context of consumer culture, namely, through the processes of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. As such, McDonalds is effectively a metaphor for a world that makes us consume in particular ways. However, Ritzer’s contribution has been criticized by some critics for underestimating the potential of consumers to construct their own meanings.

Sassatelli, Roberta. 2007. Consumer culture: History, theory and politics . London: SAGE.

In one of the most comprehensive of the key textbooks on consumer culture, Sassatelli presents a rich interpretation of the diverse range of theoretical approaches to consumer culture. One of the achievements of her contribution is to balance the needs of a range of disciplines, including sociology, history, geography, and economics.

Slater, Don. 1997. Consumer culture and modernity . Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Slater’s work takes a thematic approach in considering some of the key points of tension around consumer culture, including needs, choice, identity, status, alienation, objects, and culture. Slater argues that “consumer culture”—a culture of consumption—is unique and specific, and that it represents the dominant mode of cultural reproduction developed in the West over the course of modernity.

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Consumption and Consumer Society

The Craft Consumer and Other Essays

• © 2021
• Colin Campbell 0

University of York, York, UK

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• Written by a pioneer in the field
• Enables readers to understand the evolution of consumption over the last 30 years
• Covers the author's latest reflections on eco-sustainability, needs and desires, and post covid consumption.

Part of the book series: Consumption and Public Life (CUCO)

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Re-affirming the Prevailing Order?

Consumer Behavior: Vices, Virtues, and the Search for the Good Life

• modern consumerism
• conspicuous consumption
• consumption during COVID-19
• pandemics and consumption

Table of contents (11 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

Colin Campbell

The Desire for the New: Its Nature and Social Location as Presented in Theories of Fashion and Modern Consumerism

Consuming goods and the good of consuming, conspicuous confusion a critique of veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption, the meaning of objects and the meaning of actions: a critical note on the sociology of consumption and theories of clothing, shopping, pleasure and the sex war, consumption and the rhetorics of need and want, i shop therefore i know that i am: the metaphysical basis of modern consumerism, the craft consumer: culture, craft and consumption in a postmodern society, the curse of the new: how the accelerating pursuit of the new is driving hyper-consumption, a matter of necessity: reflections on need and want in a time of lockdown, back matter, authors and affiliations, about the author.

Colin Campbell is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. He is the author of a dozen books and over one hundred articles dealing with issues in the sociology of religion, consumerism, cultural change, and sociological theory. He is probably best-known as the author of The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Macmillan 1987, Palgrave Macmillan 2018), although he is also known for his work in the sociology of religion (see Toward A Sociology of Irreligion , Macmillan 1971) and cultural change (The Easternization of the West, Paradigm Publishers, 2007) and social theory (see The Myth of Social Action , CUP, 1996. His latest work is Has Sociology Progressed? (Palgrave Pivot, 2019).

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Consumption and Consumer Society

Book Subtitle : The Craft Consumer and Other Essays

Authors : Colin Campbell

Series Title : Consumption and Public Life

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83681-8

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Social Sciences , Social Sciences (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-83680-1 Published: 16 November 2021

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-83683-2 Published: 17 November 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-83681-8 Published: 15 November 2021

Series ISSN : 2947-8227

Series E-ISSN : 2947-8235

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : VIII, 237

Number of Illustrations : 1 b/w illustrations

Topics : Sociology of Culture , Consumer Behavior , Cultural Studies , Sociological Theory

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Distributed for Intellect Ltd

Consumer Culture

Selected essays.

Edited by Gjoko Muratovski

250 pages | 7 x 9 | © 2016

Culture Studies

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“In this essay collection, Muratovski focuses on how the marketing of products and services affects our lives and lifestyles, looking at brands as ‘icons of popular culture’ and links to our identities and political/economic systems. He points out that ‘consumer economics influences every facet of our lives.’ . . . One example noted in the book is that logos of well-known brands like Apple and McDonald’s have a power in our lives similar to the totems carried by early tribes. And the videos posted on YouTube enable us to share stories in much the same way that ancient civilizations did. What's more, linking New Zealand wines to the country’s Central Otago gold miners in the 1800s turns out to be a good way to capture the fancy of wine lovers. Recommended for upper-division and graduate marketing students, faculty, researchers, and practitioners.”

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130 Consumerism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best consumerism topic ideas & essay examples.

• 👍 Good Essay Topics on Consumerisms

📑 Interesting Topics to Write about Consumerism

💡 good research topics about consumerism, ❓ questions about consumerism.

• Consumerism-Effects on Society and Environment Some of these considerations that the consumers do not mind are their need for the product and the durability of the product. They also do not mind the effects of the manufacture and disposal of […]
• Consumerism Positive and Negative Aspect This is also believed to be the cause of materialism in the society. It is, therefore, a movement that is driven by spending of huge sums of money on such things as advertisements without taking […]
• Consumerism: Affecting Families Living in Poverty in the United States Hence, leading to the arising of consumerism protection acts and policies designed to protect consumers from dishonest sellers and producers, which indicates the high degree of consumer’s ignorance, and hence failure to make decisions of […]
• Consumerism in the 1960s in “A&;P“ by John Updike He also shows the way people responded to the opportunities and challenges of the new times. The girls seem to rebel against the system and conventions of the society, as they dare come into the […]
• Fashion Consumerism and Its Negative Effects The fashion industry is one of the fields that is consumerism saturated the most. It is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic caused another wave of consumerism in fashion because people felt alone and bored.
• Consumerism From the Sociological Perspective They also emphasized that there was a perception of healthy food as something boring and tasteless, and the perception should be rebutted, which is exactly what they were pursuing with opening the cafe.
• Consumerism and Happiness To the surprise of Luedicke and Giesler, “The more goods produced and consumed in the society the higher the growth rate of the economy”.
• Teachings of Buddha and Consumerism In conclusion, Buddha also offers a solution to the problem of suffering that man has. This is the balance that man must try to attain so as to avoid the ills that the culture of […]
• Graphic Design Effect on Industry and Consumerism One of the tools designed to draw buyers’ attention is the use of graphic elements, including the color of the product, its shape, the principle of displaying information on the package, and some other components.
• Future Legislation on Health Care Consumerism The issues of escalating costs and prices of health care as well as poor quality of services should be adequately addressed.
• Wealthy & Educated vs. Poor & Uneducated Americans on Consumerism In this paper, the author analyzed the attitudes of wealthy and educated and poor and uneducated Americans towards consumerism. The impacts of these inadequate qualifications are reflected in the society and in the economy of […]
• Dynamics and Factors of Consumerism in China The main factor that accounts for the rapid increase in disposable income in China is the market-oriented reforms that have been implemented by the government.
• Consumerism Strategy in “A Health Plan Work in Progress” by Tynan The main points which are discussed in the article are the ramp-up of price and quality transparency efforts in health plans, applying consumerism strategy in health plans perceiving the idea that competition motivates health plan […]
• Sexual Consumerism: A Case for Advertising As such, identifying the use of sexual consumerism in public media characterized by the presentation of sexually appealing adverts is key in explaining the current advertising as an emerging issue.
• Thinking Beyond my American Consumerism’ by Tiffany Anderson: The Need for Transformation in Consumer Habits Sometimes, these companies offer the best products in the market, and buyers cannot avoid them. The girl in Anderson’s story is a good example of consumers who buy their goods because of these reasons.
• “Ethical Consumerism Is Not Dead” by Julie Irwin Lastly, the article gives hope to readers and explains that the absence of robust ethical consumerism behavior does not mean that this practice is dead.
• How Consumerism Has Shaped America Conversely, the role played by Christianity and cultural celebrations in terms of influencing the consumer culture and the stake of women in shaping the traditions of different holidays are attributable to the spirit of consumerism […]
• Sony Camera Poster: Graphics in Consumerist Culture Furthermore, it explains the size of the camera and went on the reveal that it’s a digital camera with all the features, durability and reliability of a digital camera.
• Consumerism and American Popular Culture The global community has experienced the impact of advertising and the development of popular culture in terms of change of cultural values and establishment of the international ones.
• What Are Some of the Contradictions of Consumerism? In economic, consumerism refers to the belief that the customers should dictate the economic structure of the society The entry of consumerism in the market in 1960’s saw the shift and change in the shopping […]
• Consumerism and the American Culture This includes the way that the space is organized in order to facilitate the shopping experience and the study of how to display products in such a way as to encourage shoppers to purchase them.
• 1950’s Consumerism and Car Culture During this car consumerism period, the power of owning a car mostly was viewed as a certain social class privilege and also to some was a demand.
• American Youth: Consumerism and Consumption Issues Therefore, advertisements are used to create awareness to the public about products and services that are available in the market. This is because the teenagers believe the slogans that are used in advertisements and they […]
• Hegemony and American Consumerism: Is This the Opiate of the Masses? Corporate America knows this, and they have the secret to survival in a free market: words.”Religion is the opiate of the people” is one of the most frequently quoted statements of Karl Marx.
• America in the Post War Period: Consumerism The economic prosperity of the nation also led to the adoption of a new urban lifestyle that greatly impacted the moral fabric of the cities, altered race relations, and shaped the place of women in […]
• Quotes on Consumerism Analysis Discussing the problem the author concludes that the marketplace is determined not by the manufacturers and marketers but by the very consumers.
• Consumerism & Commercialism in the 20th-Century US The end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century was the period marked by a colossal development of commercialism.
• “Barbie: Queen of Dolls and Consumerism” by Amy Lin In giving a historical review, the author argues that the emergence of Barbie was a logical succession following the dominance of the images of a mother and a housewife during the Baby Boomers’ epoch.
• “Black Friday: Consumerism Minus Civilization” by Leonard This author likes to investigate numerous positive and negative aspects of Black Friday in order not to define the outcome of the event, but to explain that it is possible to have both normal and […]

👍 Good Essay Topics on Consumerism

• Consumerism in “The Ladies’ Paradise” and “Madame Bovary” The author contrasts the outer higher aspirations of the middle and higher class to the actual deception of moral code and vanity endorsed by it.
• Consumerism in American Society and Its Critique This culture is part of a popular myth in American contemporary society that advances the belief that gratification and social integration occurs through product ownership and the accumulation of material possessions.
• The Birth of a Consumerist Society Despite the obvious development of consumerism trends in the British society of the XVIII century, it would be wrong to claim that the phenomenon of consumerism as an uncontrolled desire to acquire new goods without […]
• China Society Consumerism in the Past Century It is necessary to underline that the rise of Communism in China and the activities of Mao Zedong had a certain impact on consumerism, and Chinese consumers had to changes their strategies and improve priorities […]
• China Society and Consumerism The major events that influenced on the development of the consumerist culture in China were: the establishment of China Republic in 1912 and its early years till the 1920s, Cultural Revolution and establishment of communism […]
• Consumerism in the Emirati Society Consumerism in this context, is defined as the economic and social arrangement that is grounded on an orderly conception nurturing of the need to buy products in big amounts.
• Environmental Studies: Transforming Cultures From Consumerism to Sustainability The trade fair portrayed the potential of the then and future civilizations to deploy technology, creativity, and innovation to create more consumables to boost the life of future generations.
• The Influence of Consumerism on 7-11 Years Children Moreover, families are trying to alleviate their children from threats of stigmatization and social identity by purchasing things to their children that will make them socially compatible with other children.
• Major Impacts of Consumerism in Contemporary World History This was spread to the rest of the world. Consumerism has necessitated the need to have advanced methods of doing business because products must be delivered to the market in mass, in time and of […]
• Value of Anti-Consumerist Movements Consumerism This is the conviction that the selling and buying of enormous quantities of consumer goods and services is valuable to the economy or an indication of how strong the economy is.
• Ethical Consumerism and Twinings Company The philosophy of the company is “to be totally committed to producing the highest quality tea brands and make them accessible to everyone”.
• The Phenomenon of Consumerism The peculiarities of consumerism as the social notion of the World War II period influenced the development of the women’s movements against the growth of the prices and even led to their controlling role within […]
• The Chinese Consumer Culture Phenomena Li observes that the concept of middle class began to be used in China in the late 1980s after the implementation of the reform and opening up policy The middle class category in China has […]
• Consumerism and Economic Crisis The world has barely recovered from the effects of the global financial crisis of 2008 and yet Europe is slowly gliding to a similar economic downturn.
• Gender and Consumer Culture In order to perpetuate a consumer culture, advertisements need to focus on the psychology of the recipient rather than the virtues of the product. In conclusion, Gender is a concept that captures the intersection of […]
• Design Culture: Product and Consumer If the manufacturer is able to redesign the products in order to change some specifications as required by the consumers, then the customers are likely to be loyal to the consumption of the brand.
• Can Green Consumerism Be Anything More Than a Band-Aid Solution? Campaigns to inculcate the concepts of green consumerism are on and echoed in an abundant way all over the world but the question as to whether “green marketing contribute to the greening of a states […]
• Consumerism Is Beneficial to U.S. Society That is, consumption of luxury products is thought to elevate a consumer’s social class. The desire to acquire the latest products in the market is a feeling shared by the social classes.
• Consumerism in Weeks Linton’s Article “Burden of the Modern Beast” Actually, consumption is a real mass phenomenon due to the fact that people have to use goods and services in order to exist in life.
• Exploring the Power of Consumerism as the Basis for Creating Countercultural Idea Exploring the Historical Trends and Ideologies of Consumerism It had long been considered that the consumerism and consumption patterns used to establish social limits among the existing social groups.
• Consumerism Through the History Later, the rise in production led to the rise in the problem of consumption. Massive production of goods and services has cultivated the culture to consume.
• Consumerism in Andrew Lam’s Book “The Perfume Dreams, Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora” Consumerism and not globalization is the new dawn and is the face of economic growth in many countries. As such increased demand for consumer goods and services leads to spurred growth in the production sector […]
• Consumerism in “Cloning the Consumer Culture” by Noreene Janus The process by which consumerism increases and retains the growth momentum is a consequence of the linkage between the growth of the economy, increase in the per capita income, raising consuption, increase in retail space […]
• Fight Club – Analysis of Consumerism If the cost of a recall is expected to be higher than the cost of dealing with lawsuits, initiated by unsatisfied customers, the car-manufacturing company will not move a finger: “Take the number of vehicles […]
• The Type of Consumerism in the 21st Century But what came next was a testament to the spirit of the times there were products that were created as a direct result of the success of the book and the movie.
• Consumerism Dangers in “No Logo” by Naomi Klein Klein believes marketing analysts concoct the perceived value of their products in their offices and sell them to the masses. The importance of this state of affairs in export processing zones like China is indicative […]
• American Consumerism Through the Eyes of Andy Warhol
• Gender Roles and the Profit Consumerism
• Buddhism, Consumerism, Environmental Crisis and War
• Fast Consumerism Aiding the Development of Type II Diabetes
• American Consumerism and the United States Environmental
• Clustering Consumers Who Engage in Boycotting: New Insights Into the Relationship Between Political Consumerism and Institutional Trust
• Consumerism and Control: Evidence From Swedish Central Government Agencies
• Managerialism, Consumerism and Performance Measurement of the Public Sector in the United States
• Blind Consumerism and the Basic Characteristics of a Consumer
• Competition, Consumerism, and the Other. Investigating the Ethics of Economic Competition
• Consumerism Taking Over Our Universities
• Children Consumerism, TV, and the Internet
• 18th Century Britain: Consumerism, Industrialization, and Social Change
• Consumerism: Advertising and People Brand Names
• Health Care Consumerism: New Marketing Trend
• Green Consumerism and Ecolabelling: A Strategic Behavioural Model
• Consumerism and Free Market Economy
• Comparing Consumerism and Christianity
• Capitalism and Consumerism Effects on the Division of Social Classes
• Consumerism Negatively Affects All Aspects Of Society
• Discussing Western World Turned Societies Fueled a Culture Consumerism Zombies
• New Culture and Consumerism in 1920’s Society
• Disposable Society: Capitalism and Consumerism Combined?
• Aesthetic Consumerism and the Violence of Photography: What Susan Sontag Teaches Us About Visual Culture and the Social Web
• Advertising and Consumerism: The Face of the 21st Century
• Can Green Consumerism Replace Environmental Regulation?
• Analysing the Impact of Consumerism Upon the Native American Peoples
• Changing Societal Demands: Consumerism
• Doll and Consumerism Lures
• Global Consumerism Has Lead to a Loss of Cultural Diversity
• Consumerism and the Effects of the Internet
• Consumerism, Corruption, and the Corporate Hegemony
• Explaining Consumerism Through the Ideas of Zygmunt Bauman
• Environmental Awareness, Green Consumerism and Environmentally Conscious Consumer Behaviour of Polish Seniors
• Consumerism and Its Effects on Our Society
• Harry Potter and the Consumerism of Azkaban
• American Consumerism and How It Evolved Since the First World War
• Advertising Promotes Excessive Consumerism
• 19th Century Trends, Consumerism, and Women’s Fashions
• Consumerism: Brand and Good Consumption Mentality
• How Does Consumerism Affect Outsourcing?
• How Do Citizenship Norms Differentiate Boycotting From Buycotting?
• What Are Advantages and Disadvantages of Consumerism?
• How Does Consumerism Affect the Meaning of American Freedom?
• What Are the Major Forces in Consumerism Today?
• How Did Consumerism Change the City of London?
• Which (Social) Facts Influence Consumerism?
• How Has Consumerism Influenced the Children of America?
• Are There Any Benefits in Consumerism?
• How Did Consumerism Shape the United States of America?
• What Is the Role of Product Labels (Like Food or Clothing Brands) in Consumerism?
• How Did Pop Art Challenge Beliefs in Consumerism?
• Do You Believe Special Occasions Like Christmas or Easter Have Become Too Consumeristic?
• How Did the Fashion Industry Show the Changing Position of Consumerism and Youth Culture in the 1960s?
• Is There a Way to Escape the Culture of Consumerism?
• How Does Consumerism Affect Religion and Spirituality?
• Do You Think There Are More Consumerist Women Than Men? Why?
• How Does the Work of Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons Refer to Consumerism?
• Are Teenagers and Children Becoming Consumerists Earlier?
• How Has Globalization and Consumerism Influenced Society and Consumer Ethical Values?
• Does Mass Media and Society Affect Teenage Consumerism?
• How Has Graphic Design Had on Popular Culture and Consumerism?
• In Your Opinion, Are Consumerist People Less Creative?
• How Did Psychoanalysis Change Society With Consumerism and Public Relations?
• What Is Ethical Consumerism?
• How Has the Internet Affected Consumerism?
• Is Consumerism a Pathology?
• How Does Consumerism Affect the Environment and Nature?
• Which Jobs Are Strictly Related to Consumerism?
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Consumption and Consumer Culture Role in Everyday Life

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