At the dawn of the 21st century, however, it has become impossible to ignore the fact that people everywhere on this planet are inextricably linked to each other through the air they breathe, the climate they depend upon, the food they eat, and the water they drink. In spite of this obvious lesson of interdependence, our planet’s ecosystems are subjected to continuous human assault in order to secure wasteful lifestyles. Given the complexity of global cultural flows, one would actually expect to see uneven and contradictory effects. In certain contexts, these flows might change traditional manifestations of national identity in the direction of a popular culture characterized by sameness; in others they might foster new expressions of cultural particularism; in still others they might encourage forms of consumerism. According to Ngai consumption is a “hallmark of modernity” which determines the self and social values, identity and culture.
Consumer is a person who buys and consumes products and services. The interests of consumers are not merely economic interests. The justification of the marketplace need not lie with only the lowest price or the lowest cost producer (Andrejevic 2004). Marketing’s task lies not only in providing for expressed consumer wants and needs in a convenient manner; but also exists for providing new goods and services including housing, education, transportation, urban development, pollution abatement and manpower development. They may even require higher prices for products and services. In the period of globalization, a consumer is a person who accesses global resources and buys global goods and services. in its turn, the consumer is influenced by “global web of logos and brands” (Klein 2000). Klein claims that: “More and more over the past four years, we in the West have been catching glimpses of another kind of global village, where the economic divide is widening and cultural choices narrowing” (Klein 2000). Similar ideas are expressed by Ngai who underlines importance and a crucial role of globalization and modernity in consumption. One of the main effects of consumerism is to raise concerns about the health, safety, and social worthiness of many products. For a long time, salutary criteria have been secondary to immediate satisfaction criteria in the selection of products and brands. Businessmen take the point of view that since consumerism imposes costs on them, it will ultimately be costly to the consumer. Since they have to meet more legal requirements, they have to limit or modify some of their methods for attracting customers. This may mean that consumers will not get all the products and benefits they want and may find business costs passed on to them (Sturken & Cartwright 2001). Businessmen also argue that they have the consumer’s interests at heart and have been serving him well, and that customer satisfaction is the central tenet of their business philosophy. Many sincerely believe that consumerism is politically motivated and economically unsound. Consumer games, trading stamps, and competitive brand advertising in demand-inelastic industries are largely seen as increasing the costs of products to consumers with little compensating benefits. Reductions in the level of these expenditures, particularly where they account for a large portion of total cost, should lead to lower consumer prices (Andrejevic 2004; Klein 2000).
Consumers are a part of political and social system of society which shapes their tastes and possibilities. Liberalism involves a set of political and governmental freedoms and liberties granted by the state. Liberalism underlines individual rights and equality between citizens. A liberal model is based on the following ideas: autonomous and competitive, rational and self-sufficient, acquisitive and abstract. Consumerism has come as a shock to many businessmen because deep in their hearts they believe that they have been serving the consumer extraordinarily well. The company should produce what the customer wants. But the problem is that in efficiently serving customers’ desires, it is possible to hurt their long-run interests. In its turn, neo-liberalism underlines protracted role of the state and market rationality that rules all spheres of human activities (Sturken & Cartwright 2001). Following Ngai, consumption is a driven force for modernity and the main factor of consumer revolution. Businessmen have not worried about this so long as consumers have continued to buy their products. But while consumers buy as consumers, they increasingly express their discontent as voters. They use the political system to correct the abuses that they cannot resist through the economic system. Consumers do not necessarily desire governmental regulation of business and marketing activity; however, increased intervention will result from unresponsive business policy. State and local consumer groups are just now beginning to organize themselves properly. It is true that consumerism through government action and through the collective impact of buying power asks business to cast aside the “buyer beware” philosophy. The consumer wants to act and be treated as an intelligent, respected purchaser (Larkin 1997). The consumer desires to be highly prized as a repeat purchaser. This is after all only an appeal to sound marketing practice and high standards of business. Students of marketing should understand that the growing impact of consumerism on marketing-government relationships offers an exceptional opportunity for business renewal. Consumerism in the minds of business executives is sometimes equated with governmental regulation. As such it is seen as the substitution of the will of government for the will of the market on business. The result, the reasoning goes, is a suppression of competition, and of businesses’ ability to contribute economically as well as socially (Foucault 1980). Foucault singles out such processes as notion of discipline and notion of cultural agency and political resistance (Foucault 1980). The dilemma for the marketer, forced into the open by consumerism, is that be cannot go on giving the consumer only what pleases him without considering the effect on the consumer’s and society’s well-being. “The project of transforming culture into little more than a collection of brand-extensions-inwaiting would not have been possible without the deregulation and privatization policies of the past three decades” (Klein 2000).
Globalization has changed perception of products and services creating such things as commodity fetishism and subsumption. The main characteristics of globalization are nation-based production (global assembly lines), global flow of visual and commodity culture and globalization of codes and signs (“imagineering” power). The point is that as consumer groups become more sophisticated, more informed, and more aware,. They will be better able to evaluate the impact of laws passed in the name of consumer protection or to promote competition. Sometimes such laws are actually designed to protect special interest groups (Murray and Ouellette 2004). Other times they seek to block activities that are actually in the consumers’ best interest. Consumer advocates in the future may present their ideas on the facts to the public, and so influence public policy. A recent case in point is the proposed no-fault insurance which is being opposed quite actively and avidly by special interest groups such as the trial lawyers. Consumer advocates, however, are countering the trial lawyers’ opposition. The thematic landscape traversed by scholars of cultural globalization is vast and the questions they raise are too numerous to be fleshed out in this short introduction (Ngai 1997). However, looking behind the façade of repetitive TV commercials that claim to ‘love to see you smile’, we can identify a number of serious problems. For one, the generally low nutritional value of fast-food meals – and particularly their high fat content – has been implicated in the rise of serious health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and juvenile obesity. Moreover, the impersonal, routine operations of ‘rational’ fast-service establishments actually undermine expressions of forms of cultural diversity. In the long run, the McDonaldization of the world amounts to the imposition of uniform standards that eclipse human creativity and dehumanize social relations (Newitz and Wray 1997). As consumer groups mature and become better informed, they will become more cognizant of existing and proposed regulations. Thus the consumer movement may well play a rather important role in creating a marketplace that has not merely more regulation, but regulation designed to benefit consumers, while enhancing the competitive climate. In reality consumerism as a movement does not have the inherent characteristics of many other historical movements of our country. Consumer groups are only now beginning to organize themselves (Newitz and Wray 1997).
Commodity fetishism and subsumption means that products and services do not have their real value and do not involve the surplus value suppressed by the overvaluation of consumption and its neoliberal values of self-transformation. Consumers buy products and services because of a prestige and image instead of the necessity. Also, consumers are ready to pay double prices for stylish products and popular services influenced by brand image and product prestige. These processes and factors lead to such manifestations of neoliberalism as privatization of justice and government of the self-discipline, discourse of Individual Choice and Personal Responsibility and self-help, therapeutic discourses aimed at women in particular. These laws regulate marketplace activity such as packaging, labeling, pricing, grading, selling, and advertising. They restrict freedom of business action and competition, and therefore are undesirable. It is obvious, however, that consumerism need not automatically mean more government regulation. Sometimes consumer groups oppose regulations. The fair-trade laws may be cited as an example. Laws to ban the advertising of prescription drug prices are another. Consumer groups in fact might be willing to promote action against certain laws. They may prefer self-regulation by industry (Larkin 1997). Reality TV becomes an entertainment for masses and the tool of propaganda and total control (Andrejevic 2004). “When the youth-culture feeding frenzy began in the early nineties, many of us who were young at the time saw ourselves as victims of a predatory marketing machine that coopted our identities, our styles and our ideas and turned them into brand food” (Klein 2000).
Globalization and consumerism lead to such processes as separation of the core and periphery, or a division between the West and the Rest. The discourse is that the west plays the role of a colonizer while the rest of the world becomes a colonized. In this case, globalization is transformed to Americanization and homogenization, adaptation and transformation (Sturken & Cartwright 2001). Consumerism is reborn because all of the conditions that normally combine to produce a successful social movement are present. These conditions are structural conduciveness, structural strain, growth of a generalized belief, precipitating factors, mobilization for action, and social control (Andrejevic 2004). Of course, the progress and course of an incipient social movement depends on the reception it receives by those in social control, in this case, the industrial-political complex. A proper response by the agents of social control can drain the early movement of its force. These processes lead to resistance in the public sphere and colonial pressures in domestic spheres. Many members of the business community attacked, resisted, or ignored the consumer advocates in a way that only strengthened the consumerist cause (Foucault 1980).
In sum, consumerism is not supported by highly efficient corporate law firms. It does not have an accepted list of national priorities. Its objectives and goals are often poorly articulated, if at all. Yet despite this, progress has been made. Congressmen, senators, state and federal governments are now paying heed. Serious attention is being given to the general aims and desires of the consumer movement. The consumer movement in the literature, sometimes appears to be portrayed as a unified movement with nonconflicting interests and objectives. Traditional economic thought supports this by indicating that all interests are satisfied or maximized in the marketplace. In reality, however, some consumer interests are satisfied at the expense of other consumers. Inconsistency exists among consumers in their various roles such as performing inadequately on the production line and complaining about the quality of products; demanding more jobs and higher wages along with higher dividends and pensions; expecting higher than normal wage increases coupled with less inflation and less expensive goods.
Works Cited
Andrejevic, M. Reality TV. Rowman and Littelfield Publishers. Ltd. 2004.
Foucault, M. Power/Knowledge. Pantheon Books New York, 1980.
Larkin, B. Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities. Journal of the International African Institute, 67 (1997), pp. 406-440.
Klein, N, Nologo. First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2000.
Newitz, A. and Wray, M. What is White Trash. in Whiteness. ed. M. Hill, New York University, 1997.
Ngai, P. Subsumption or Consumption? The Phantom of Consumer Revolution in “Globalizing”China.
Murray, S., Ouellette, L. Reality TV. new York University Press 2004.
Sturken, M, & Cartwright, L. Consumer Culture and the Manufacturing of Desire. in Practices of looking: An introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.