Consumerism Case

Consumerism, and its close confederate advertising, clearly serve the interests of firms that produce and/or sell consumer goods, as well as the interests of consumers. Advertising has developed extensively since the early 1900’s to the point where materialism has become conspicuously the universal mindset. Such advertisements promote two ideas: the idea that you need to have a product and also the idea that certain brands or materials are of a higher class.

The way that an advertisement would create the need of a product was by a technique that would build a vision of the consumer gladly using the product as an everyday item. In the book, Major Problems in American Business History, there is a document called, “Victor Talking Machine Company”. This document is an advertisement from 1913, which illustrates a couple sitting in their living room with tons of miniature-sized people roaming around. The caption of the advertisement delivers in a few sentences, a very complacent and satisfying environment, in which you would immediately want to be in. Additionally, there is also an essay called, “The International Industry of Recorded Sound”. This essay shows how record companies tried to persuade customers that music was one of the only things that could make you think of memories very vividly. World War I was happening at this time, and these talking-machines were the only things that reminded soldiers of home and thus made it an indispensable item for them.

Consumerism played a major role in the interests of consumers was by creating brands for a higher social class. For example, there is a document in which the president of GM (General Motors) describes how his company competed with Ford. In the document, he mentioned that GM’s idea of attracting more consumers was to have a car of more luxury than Ford. GM obviously wanted to build a car that belonged in the next higher price because it would be more exclusive than the Model A from Ford.