24/11/2015

Consumerism



http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/bitstream/1/2027517/1/HS1273.pdf


"Some economists suggest that whenever United States citizens fail to step up their over-all consumption by at least 4 per cent in any given year they are inviting a "failure-to-grow recession." How to live with mount- ing productivity is each year becoming a more urgent problem for Americans, and soon it will be plaguing Western Europeans." 



All this backlog of what he called consumer need was awaiting "activation by advertising.

"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 satis- factions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption....We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate."


Old-fashioned selling methods based on offering goods to fill an obvious need in a straightforward manner were no longer enough. Even the use of status appeals and sly appeals to the subconscious needs and anxieties of the public



The way to end glut was to produce gluttons. But, of course, it would not be put that baldly. Consumers should be provided with plausible excuses for buying more of each product than might in earlier years have seemed rational or prudent.


A spokesman for Revlon, Inc., the cosmetics firm, explained that one of the secrets of the company's fabulous success during the late fifties was that it "taught women to match their nail enamel to their moods and occasions, so that
they bought more."


Brooks Stevens



And Brooks Stevens, a leading industrial designer, explained obsolescence planning in these terms: "Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence; and everybody who can read without moving his lips should know it by now. We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then next year we deliberately introduce something that will make those products old fashioned, out of date, obsolete.... It isn't organized waste. It's a sound contribution to the American economy."


Packard, V. (1960) The Waste Makers. Available at: http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/bitstream/1/2027517/1/HS1273.pdf (Accessed: 24 November 2015).





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