Consumerism is all around us. It stays with us from the cradle till our grave. In fact it attaches itself to us even before birth. The extent of consumerism can be seen from the commercialization of love and sex. And the interesting fact here is that today’s consumer themselves don’t know the extent of consumerism. They think it’s but natural to have material possessions to make one fee; happy and contented. For example as Naomi Rockler writes, it’s a girls’ childhood dream to have a huge wedding with extravagant decorations, catering and clothes. She thinks it’s a part of her life; in fact a wedding is like a whole new beginning, so how can she just make it plain and simple. Consumers are of the opinion that they have one life and it’s crucial that the live it to its fullest. They just don’t want to miss out anything .
Television has boosted consumerism as no one else. The whole FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) industry thrives on the fact that they get exposure on television. They wouldn’t be able to survive without it. Not on FMCG but durables and white goods are also being heavily advertised on the mass media. The interesting fact here is that we as consumers think that we are watching television but the TV is also watching us back. There are devices that monitor our watching patterns and billions of dollars are spent researching to find which channels we watch at what times. In this way companies can give more advertisement on the channels we watch more. It’s all money making vicious cycle.
Now even children are made target of this. Parents think their children should watch cartoons as they are harmless and their child would remain unaffected from the perils of this world. But that’s not the case. First children used to read story books and play outside. But then the trend shifted. Children spent less and less time reading books and gave more time to watching television Cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Snow white and the seven dwarfs, sleeping beauty and power puff girls became the talk of the town.
An average American sees 20,000 different commercials in a year. Throughout his life time he’ll get exposed to different kinds of influencers. Television, newspapers, billboards and now even washrooms and schools are branded. So much effort is being put in marketing and selling of goods. Competition has increased so much that marketers don't want any opportunity to be left untouched. They want to avail every window of opportunity that knocks.
According to Featherstone (1991, 86) the consumer is made conscious that he not only speaks with his clothes, but with his home, furnishings, decorations, car and other activities” This clearly illustrates the height of consumerism. But the question here is that how did consumerism become so popular. How did the shift from simple living to materialistic living happened. The answer lies in the success of advertising and selling. Advertising has become a lucrative industry and companies allocate billions of dollars to advertising budgets. As we all know, the basic purpose of advertising is to sell. Creativity in advertisements has flourished excessively in the last decade. Advertisers have come up with excellent and mind blowing advertisements for their clients and this in turn have increased sales. The increasing number of sales automatically explains the increasing level of consumerism.
Ewen (1988) says that consumers need to live up to cultural standards of perfection. When consumers see the advertisement, they imagine themselves as being the other one. They aspire to be like the other one and thus buy the products. They buy the product with the fact in mind that this particular product will make them perfect. It has made us more and more materialistic. The aim of repetitive advertisement is to expose the consumer again and again to a product. This makes the consumers sadder as they can’t afford to have it. The early men were happy as they didn’t have the lust to have more and more. The advertising world exposes us to what we don’t have and we work harder to achieve that. This is why we have become like working robots. We as consumers think it’s normal to work 18 hrs a day because we need to have a good living. What defines good living? A Lexus or an apartment with attached swimming pool or perhaps a long vacation every month?
Ewen further comments that consumerism was promoted to encourage capitalism. He further says that advertising is not about simply selling. It was a corporate propaganda to control consumers and promote the perils of capitalism. Capitalism thrives on the concept of consumerism. Buy more, produce more, and earn more.
When consumers got tired of seeing advertisements, marketers came up with public relations and promotions. Different types of gimmicks are used to sell products. Journalists and product experts are paid to write good reviews about the products. Buzz and rumors are planned by marketers to control word of mouth marketing. News is made up to gain attention from customers. Companies build up stories to gain identity. In fact there are firms that practice public relations. Multi nationals pay billions of dollars to control what people are talking about them. Social media such as face book twitter etc. is excessively monitored and used by companies to see the buying and browsing patterns of consumers. It seems if we have been invaded. There is no privacy whatsoever.
Sometimes it seems that we are living in an artificial world where everything is planned!
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