Editing Consumerism (section)

==History==

===Origins===

The consumer society developed throughout the late 17th century and the 18th century.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trentmann |first=Frank |title=Empire of things: how we became a world of consumers, from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first |date=2016 |publisher=Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-241-19840-7 |location=London}}</ref> 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 goods|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. <ref>{{Cite journal |last=Peck |first=Linda |date=2002 |title=Luxury and War: Reconsidering Luxury Consumption in Seventeenth-Century England |url=https://doi.org/10.2307/4053438 |journal=Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=1–23 |doi=10.2307/4053438 |jstor=4053438 }}</ref> Luxury goods included sugar, tobacco, tea, and coffee; these were increasingly grown on vast plantations (historically by [[Slavery|slave]] labor) in the Caribbean as demand steadily rose. In particular, sugar consumption in [[Great Britain|Britain]] increased by a factor of 20 during the 18th century. <ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Witkowski |first=Terrence |date=1989 |title=Colonial Consumers in Revolt: Buyer Values and Behavior during the Nonimportation Movement, 1764–1776 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2489320 |journal=Journal of Consumer Research |volume=16 |issue=2 |pages=216–226 |doi=10.1086/209210 |jstor=2489320}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Evans |first=Chris |date=2012 |title=The Plantation Hoe: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Commodity, 1650–1850 |url=https://doi.org/10.5309/willmaryquar.69.1.0071 |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=71–100|doi=10.5309/willmaryquar.69.1.0071 }}</ref>

Furthermore, the [[Boston Non-importation agreement|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.<ref name=":2" />

===Culture of consumption===
[[File:The Fable of the Bees (1705).jpg|left|thumb|[[Bernard Mandeville]]'s work ''[[Fable of the Bees]]'', which justified [[conspicuous consumption]]]]
The pattern of intensified consumption became particularly visible in the 17th century in London, where the [[landed gentry|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, 1st Earl of Salisbury|Robert Cecil]] in the [[Strand, London|Strand]]. Shops started to become important as places for Londoners to meet and socialize and became popular destinations alongside the theatre. From 1660, [[English Restoration|Restoration]] London also saw the growth of luxury buildings as advertisements for social position, with speculative architects like [[Nicholas Barbon]] and [[Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex|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.<ref>
{{cite book
 | author1 = Linda Levy Peck
 | title = Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-Century England
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=-jM0ZvlYofoC
 | location = Cambridge
 | publisher = Cambridge University Press
 | date = 2005
 | isbn = 9780521842327
 | access-date = 14 June 2020
}}
</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2020}}

[[File:Horse Frightened by a Lion by Josiah Wedgwood.jpg|thumb|right|[[Josiah Wedgwood]]'s pottery, a status symbol of consumerism in the late 18th century]]

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.<ref>
{{cite web
|url=http://www.quarc.de/fileadmin/downloads/Coming%20to%20live%20in%20a%20consumer%20society%20%28chapter%202%29.pdf
|title=Coming to live in a consumer society
|access-date=29 October 2013
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130810222240/http://www.quarc.de/fileadmin/downloads/Coming%20to%20live%20in%20a%20consumer%20society%20%28chapter%202%29.pdf
|archive-date=10 August 2013|url-status=dead
|quote = The origins of the consumer society as we know it today can be traced back a few hundred years. According to McKendrick, Brewer and Plumb (1982) the birthplace can be found in eighteenth century England. However, as McCracken (1988) has pointed out, the consumer revolution as a whole needs to be seen as part of a larger transformation in Western societies, which began in the sixteenth century. The social changes brought about by that transformation resulted in the modification of Western concepts of time, space, society, the individual, the family and the state. This provided the base on which the consumer revolution could thrive and develop into a mass phenomenon. McCracken (1988) was one of the first scholars offering a comprehensive review of the history of consumption. He approached the subject by dividing the course of events into three moments. The first moment falls within the last quarter of the sixteenth century in Elizabethan England where profound changes in consumption pattern occurred in a small section of the population. This was the moment where some of the established concepts, notably the concepts of space, the individual and the family began to falter. The circumstances bringing about these changes served as a primer for the consumer movement that would come a century later. McCracken describes this as the second moment. It was characterized by a heightened propensity to spend, by a greatly extended choice of goods, and an increased frequency of purchases. Fashion started to play an important role too, and, for the first time, the individual as a consumer became the target of manipulative attempts. The origins of modern marketing instruments can be traced back to this time. With the rise of the third moment, the consumer movement was already a structural feature of life(McCracken, 1988). However, the development was not yet completed. The 19th century added new qualities to the movement and turned it into a 'dream world of consumption' (Williams, 1982).
}}
</ref> 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 (disambiguation)|human life]], and pushing the message that the potential customer's personal life requires some product.<ref name="auto1">{{Cite journal|last1=Czarnecka|first1=Barbara|last2=Schivinski|first2=Bruno|date=17 June 2019|title=Do Consumers Acculturated to Global Consumer Culture Buy More Impulsively? The Moderating Role of Attitudes towards and Beliefs about Advertising|journal=Journal of Global Marketing|volume=32|issue=4|pages=219–238|doi=10.1080/08911762.2019.1600094|s2cid=182181403|issn=0891-1762|url=https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/26848/1/Czarnecka%20and%20Schivinski%20Accepted%20JGM.pdf}}</ref>

===Mass production===
{{main|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 (i.e., mining, steel, oil, transportation networks, communications networks, [[industrial cities]], financial centers, etc.).{{sfn|Ryan|2007|p=701}} 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 Revolution|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.{{sfn|Ryan|2007|p=702 |ps=.{{qn|date=August 2012}}}}

[[File:DCUSA.Gallery10.TargetBlackFriday.Wikipedia.jpg|thumb|[[Black Friday (shopping)|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".<ref name="DEADMALL">{{cite web|url=http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=11747|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091114231851/http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=11747|url-status=dead|archive-date=14 November 2009|title=Essay – Dawn of the Dead Mall|date=11 November 2009|work=The Design Observer Group|access-date=14 February 2010}}</ref>

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:
{{cquote|It is true of dress in even a higher degree than of most other items of consumption, that people will undergo a very considerable degree of privation in the comforts or the necessaries of life to afford what is considered a decent amount of wasteful consumption; so that it is by no means an uncommon occurrence, in an inclement climate, for people to go ill clad to appear well dressed.<ref>{{cite book|last=Veblen|first=Thorstein|title=The Theory of the Leisure Class|year=2010}}</ref>
}}

The term "conspicuous consumption" spread to describe consumerism in the United States in the 1960s, but was soon linked to debates about [[media influence|media theory]], [[culture jamming]], and its corollary [[productivism]].

{{cquote|By 1920 most Americans had experimented with occasional installment buying.<ref>{{cite book|last=Calder|first=Lendol Glen|title=Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit|publisher=[[Princeton University Press]]|year=1990|location=Princeton, NJ|page=[https://archive.org/details/financingamerica00cald_0/page/222 222]|isbn=0-691-05827-X|url=https://archive.org/details/financingamerica00cald_0/page/222}}</ref>
}}

=== Television and American consumerism ===
The advent of the television in the late 1940s proved to be an attractive opportunity for advertisers, who could reach potential consumers in the home using lifelike images and sound. The introduction of mass commercial television positively impacted retail sales. The television motivated consumers to purchase more products and upgrade whatever they currently had.<ref name="Woojin2022">{{Cite journal |last=Kim |first=Woojin |date=1 April 2022 |title=Television and American consumerism |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272722000111 |journal=Journal of Public Economics |language=en |volume=208 |page=104609 |doi=10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104609 |s2cid=246897308 |issn=0047-2727}}</ref> In the United States, a new consumer culture developed centered around buying products, especially [[automobile]]s and other [[durable good]]s, to increase their social status. Woojin Kim of the [[University of California, Berkeley]], argues that [[sitcoms]] of this era also helped to promote the idea of [[suburbia]].<ref name="Woojin2022"/>

According to Woojin, the attraction of television advertising has brought an improvement in Americans' social status. Watching television programs has become an important part of people's cultural life. Television advertising can enrich and change the content of advertising from hearing and vision and make people in contact with it. The image of television advertising is realistic, and it is easy to have an interest and desire to buy advertising goods, At the same time, the audience intentionally or unintentionally compares and comments on the advertised goods while appreciating the TV advertisements, arouses the interest of the audience by attracting attention, and forms a buying idea, which is conducive to enhancing the buying confidence. Therefore, TV can be used as a media way to accelerate and affect people's desire to buy products.<ref name="Woojin2022"/>

===In the 21st century===
[[File:Dongmen.JPG|thumb|[[McDonald's]] and [[KFC]] restaurants in China]]
[[File:Marinedacity.JPG|thumb|300px|Shopping mall in [[La Coruña]], [[Galicia (Spain)|Galicia]], ([[Spain]]).]]
Madeline Levine criticized what she saw as a large change in [[American culture]] – "a shift away from values of community, [[spirituality]], and [[integrity]], and toward competition, [[Economic materialism|materialism]] and disconnection."<ref>Levine, Madeline. "[http://www.nais.org/publications/ismagazinearticle.cfm?ItemNumber=150274 Challenging the Culture of Affluence]". Independent School. 67.1 (2007): 28–36. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927060753/http://www.nais.org/publications/ismagazinearticle.cfm?ItemNumber=150274 |date=27 September 2011 }}</ref>

Businesses have realized that wealthy consumers are the most attractive targets of marketing. The upper class's tastes, lifestyles, and preferences trickle down to become the standard for all consumers. The not-so-wealthy consumers can "purchase something new that will speak of their place in the tradition of affluence".<ref>Miller, Eric. ''Attracting the Affluent''. Naperville, Illinois: Financial Sourcebooks, 1990.{{ISBN?}}{{page?|date=December 2024}}</ref> A consumer can have the [[Deferred gratification|instant gratification]] of purchasing an expensive item to improve social status.

Emulation is also a core component of 21st century consumerism. As a general trend, regular consumers seek to emulate those who are above them in the social hierarchy. The poor strive to imitate the wealthy and the wealthy imitate celebrities and other icons. The celebrity endorsement of products can be seen as evidence of the desire of modern consumers to purchase products partly or solely to emulate people of higher social status. This purchasing behavior may co-exist in the mind of a consumer with an image of oneself as being an individualist.

Cultural capital, the intangible social value of goods, is not solely generated by [[Information pollution#Cultural factors|cultural pollution]]. Subcultures also manipulate the value and prevalence of certain commodities through the process of [[bricolage]]. Bricolage is the process by which mainstream products are adopted and transformed by subcultures.<ref>Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa. "Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture". Oxford UP, 2001, p. 78</ref> These items develop a function and meaning that differs from their corporate producer's intent. In many cases, commodities that have undergone bricolage often develop political meanings.

For example, Doc Martens, originally [[Marketing|marketed]] as workers boots, gained popularity with the [[punk movement]] and [[AIDS activism]] groups and became symbols of an individual's place in that social group.<ref>Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa. ''Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture''. Oxford UP, 2001, p. 79 {{ISBN?}}</ref> When corporate America recognized the growing popularity of Doc Martens they underwent another change in cultural meaning through counter-bricolage. The widespread sale and marketing of Doc Martens brought the boots back into the mainstream. While corporate America reaped the ever-growing profits of the increasingly expensive boot and those modeled after its style, Doc Martens lost their original political association. Mainstream consumers used Doc Martens and similar items to create an "individualized" sense of [[Consumer identity|identity]] by appropriating statement items from subcultures they admired.

When consumerism is considered as a movement to improve rights and powers of buyers in relation to sellers, there are certain traditional rights and powers of sellers and buyers.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Gary Armstrong|author2=Stewart Adam|author3=Sara Denize|author4=Philip Kotler|title=Principles of Marketing|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UKyaBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA463|year=2014|publisher=Pearson Australia|isbn=978-1-4860-0253-5|page=463}}</ref>

The [[American Dream]] has long been associated with consumerism.<ref>{{cite news |title=The Rise of American Consumerism |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/tupperware-consumer/ |publisher=[[PBS]]}}</ref><ref name="americandream"/> According to [[Sierra Club]]'s Dave Tilford, "With less than 5 percent of world population, the U.S. uses one-third of the world's paper, a quarter of the world's oil, 23 percent of the coal, 27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the copper."<ref>{{cite news |title=Use It and Lose It: The Outsize Effect of U.S. Consumption on the Environment |url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/ |work=[[Scientific American]] |date=14 September 2012}}</ref>

China is the world's fastest-growing consumer market.<ref name="americandream">{{cite news |title=The meteoric rise of Chinese consumerism will reshape the world, and maybe even destroy it |url=https://qz.com/994345/the-meteoric-rise-of-chinese-consumerism-will-reshape-the-world-and-maybe-even-destroy-it/ |work=Quartz |date=4 June 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=China to surpass US as world's biggest consumer market this year |url=https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/China-to-surpass-US-as-world-s-biggest-consumer-market-this-year |work=Nikkei Asian Review |date=24 January 2019}}</ref> According to biologist [[Paul R. Ehrlich]], "If everyone consumed resources at the US level, you will need another four or five Earths."<ref>{{Cite news|last=McKie|first=Robin|date=25 February 2017|title=Biologists think 50% of species will be facing extinction by the end of the century|language=en-GB|work=The Observer|url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/25/half-all-species-extinct-end-century-vatican-conference|access-date=11 March 2023|issn=0029-7712}}</ref>

With the development of the economy, consumers' awareness of protecting their rights and interests is growing, and consumer demand is growing. Online commerce has expanded the consumer market and enhanced consumer information and market transparency. Digital fields not only bring advantages and convenience but also cause many problems and increase the opportunities for consumers to suffer damage.

Under the virtual network environment, on the one hand, consumers' privacy protection is vulnerable to infringement, driven by the development of hacker technology and the Internet, on the other hand, consumers' right to know is the basic right of consumers. When purchasing goods and receiving services, we need the real situation of institutional services. Finally, in the Internet era, consumers' demand is increasing, and we also need to protect consumers' rights and interests to improve consumers' rights and interests and promote the operation of the economic market.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kucuk |first=S. Umit |date=14 March 2016 |title=Consumerism in the Digital Age |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joca.12101 |journal=Journal of Consumer Affairs |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=515–538 |doi=10.1111/joca.12101 |issn=0022-0078|hdl=10.1111/joca.12101 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

==== Socially mediated political consumerism ====
{{also|Consumerism and social media}}
Today's society has entered the era of entertainment and the Internet. Most people spend more time browsing on mobile phones than face-to-face. The convenience of social media has a subtle impact on the public and unconsciously changes people's consumption habits. The socialized Internet is gradually developing, such as Twitter, websites, news and social media, with sharing and participation as the core, consumers share product information and opinions through social media.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Boulianne |first=Shelley |date=31 December 2021 |title=Socially mediated political consumerism |journal=Information, Communication & Society |volume=25 |issue=5 |language=en |pages=609–617 |doi=10.1080/1369118X.2021.2020872 |s2cid=245621126 |issn=1369-118X|doi-access=free }}</ref> At the same time, by understanding the reputation of the brand on social media, consumers can easily change their original attitude towards the brand. The information provided by social media helps consumers shorten the time of thinking about products and decision-making, so as to improve consumers' initiative in purchase decision-making and improve consumers' shopping and decision-making quality to a certain extent.