Almost all of the things we use in our daily life must be purchased through consumption, and consumption behavior is a very natural behavioral activity. How is our current consumer culture incubated? How has people's behavior changed with the change in consumer culture? The power of consumption comes from?
In today's world, consumerism is prevalent, and consumer traps are everywhere, and understanding the formation of consumer culture can help us better identify consumerist traps. The book "Making Consumers" explains the causes, drivers, changes and essence of consumerism.
Chapter 1 The Formation of the Market and Commodity Fetishism.
In an agrarian society, people usually produce their own necessities. Even if there is a surplus of product output, it is difficult to achieve large-scale circulation of goods due to the constraints of distance and transportation. Later, with the invention of the steam engine, productivity increased, and easy transportation eliminated the barriers caused by distance, goods could circulate quickly, and people's needs were met and expanded.
In the traditional subsistence economy, almost all the daily necessities that people need come from the self-production and self-sale of a small range of groups, everyone can see the production process of products, and a person can touch or master the entire production process of goods. However, in a market economy, production and consumption are completely separated, and even if consumers participate in the manufacture of goods, because of the division of labor, they can only participate in a certain part of the production process, and cannot understand the entire production process of the commodity, and thus cannot measure its cost, structure, required labor and labor time. The mystery of the product is generated, and the consumer has no basis for the formulation of the product. In addition, capital adds cultural, brand, historical and other factors to the use value of commodities to create so-called value.
The separation of production and consumption, consumers are not clear about the production process of window goods, and the product packaging also makes people unable to see the real appearance of the product, which leads to a crisis of trust. In order to solve the problem of trust, companies are starting to make a fuss about branding.
Through trials, publicity, etc., the brand allows people to build trust in the brand and eliminate people's insecurity. Once people recognize a certain brand, consumers will no longer repeatedly weigh the quality of the brand's products, and no longer judge the quality of the product by smelling, watching and other real experiences.
Brands also bind various fantasies and stories to the product, packaging some of the consumer's fantasies into a story, so that the consumer mistakenly believes that using or owning a certain product can realize some of his fantasies. At this time, people buy not only goods, but also stories and their own fantasies.
Brands even associate a product with a certain status or group of people, artificially injecting some special symbols into the product, so that people can reflect their status and identity by owning a certain product. Some ideas and values that do not want to do with the product are incorporated into the product, and the power and values projected by the brand symbolic status and status are gradually influencing people. The fetishistic process arises gradually. I think that if fetishism arises because people do not understand the manufacturing process of commodities and because of the "mystery" of commodities, then fetishishism actually began to appear after the separation of production and consumption. If it is a fetishism caused by some special commodity to represent identity, status, etc., then fetishism has always existed.
Chapter 2 Merchandise: Department Stores and Shopping.
Commercial spaces and commercial symbols proliferate in the city, and large places dedicated to consumption "department stores" have appeared. The store constantly attracts people's eyes and evokes their desires.
Selecting goods in stores and using them as social places was initially a service only available to the upper classes such as the aristocracy, but as consumption and demand expanded, department stores democratized these behaviors.
In order to attract more customers, department stores invite the public to come and go freely, with a variety of goods, huge shelves, and ...... without compulsory purchases and bargainingAll kinds of performances are to better attract and retain customers, so that customers succumb to the desire to spend. The mall also controls people's movements in the mall by carefully designing the placement of windows and items in the store.
Because the division of labor in the family is that the husband works and the wife takes care of the housework, and in a family, the woman is responsible for the purchase. Therefore, in order to make women stay in department stores for a long time, shopping malls are equipped with restaurants, barber shops, beauty salons and other living facilities, which seem to be convenient for consumers, are arranged to cater to women's psychology, and the ultimate purpose is to stimulate purchases. Shopping malls have also gradually become social places for women, and the concept of shopping has gradually emerged and been accepted. Before the rise of department stores, people had to have a demand before they shopped. After the rise of department stores, people will generate demand in the process of visiting the mall.
Women are addicted to shopping malls, largely because women are bound at home and their sense of personal value cannot be reflected. When department stores and major capitals are promoting that our product symbol is to be their own queen, freewheeling, chic, and unrestrained, women will reflect their value and indulge in it by simply buying and possessing products when they cannot quickly change their true status quo.
More and more goods enter people's daily life, and people's aesthetics also change with the change of goods, and the latest window products are trend-leading. Even so, merchants are still trying to stimulate people's desire to spend, and to this end, the mall has created a series of eye-catching commercial performances. In addition, department stores reinforce and perpetuate consumer culture by selling class identity. They offer goods that fit the bourgeois way of life and make people think that a certain commodity is a status symbol for certain classes. The group that embraced this idea was willing to pay for it, and by buying certain goods, they pretended to join a higher class.
Merchants give goods abstract concepts such as nobility and dignity, and commodities become the objects of everyone's admiration, and people go farther and farther on the road of fetishism.
Chapter 3 Commodity Dynamics: Matrix Communication under the Concept of "Same and Different".
People give goods functions other than use value, and some goods become special symbols, symbolizing class, wealth, status.
What kind of goods symbolize class, wealth, and status? This discourse is controlled by the upper classes.
In order to maintain its position, the dominant class keeps the class to which it belongs. They set themselves apart by showing off and showing off the size of the house, the style of the home, the number of servants, etc., erecting unique symbols that are difficult for ordinary people to imitate and approach, and erecting barriers for the lower classes who want to join them. They believe that if they fall into the "popular" style, they will fall into the same status as the people at the bottom. They resist being inferior to themselves and trying to fit into a group that is equal to or superior to them. People compete around symbols, and "always want to be superior and different" has become an obsession. Symbol wars ensued.
Commodities with special symbols are not the commodities themselves, but the cultural symbols such as class, identity, and status implied by the commodities. Out of illusion about the life of the upper class, in order to enter the higher classes, people of the lower classes rushed to buy special symbols representing the upper classes. People buy less of a commodity, more of a fantasy about life in a higher class.
The war of symbols caused the tide of goods to ebb and flow, and the common manifestation was that the upper class recognized certain items and showed their unique identity and status by owning these items, and then the lower classes began to follow the imitation frantically, and once the original unique items became popular, the upper classes would find unique items again and make themselves unique again.
Mechanization, enormity, and fetishization make industrial products easy to reproduce and disseminate. The upper class, out of the pursuit of difference, began to reject mass-produced products, and people's yearning for "authenticity" became the driving force of consumer culture, and the pursuit of handmade manufacturing. The artworks created by artists provided a unique differentiation for the upper class, and the status and value of the artists also increased.
The upper classes proved themselves through objects, and the general public followed imitation, defining themselves through objects in order to gain a sense of social identity. People compete to see who is more unique, and people's desire for difference is just to prove that they are greater and more noble.
Chapter 4 The Phantom of the Commodity: The Invasion and Proliferation of Images in Everyday Life.
The production of images plays an important role in stimulating consumption. Because images have become tools and carriers for commodity communication, penetrating into public life, stimulating people's desire to consume and sowing the seeds of consumer desire.
Newspapers and magazines, for example, are filled with a variety of cunning hard and soft broad, making it difficult for readers to distinguish which ones are magazine content and which ones are advertisements. Articles and advertisements provide readers with fantasies that allow people to see the life and world they yearn for and suffer from the gap in reality. Texts affect people's perceptions, change people's horizons, cause anxiety, and make people want to correct and change, and then advertising provides a solution, telling people that through consumption, they can satisfy their fantasies and eliminate their pain.
* After that, the film is produced. The emergence of a new medium such as film has an unprecedented ability to amplify desires and stimulate desires. Viewers are captivated by moving images and are fascinated by the actors, costumes, and all sorts of things on screen. In movies and magazines, social phenomena such as manual labor and poverty are rarely mentioned. In some films, the heroine is a poor, miserable young woman, but often wears expensive clothes. By showing the luxurious and free life of modern young people in an attractive and romantic way, it makes most people feel the imperfection of real life at the moment, and leads young women and men to compare real life with life on screen, causing dissatisfaction and confusion. When I read this part, I was shocked, this is a book written decades ago, and the current short**, sweet drama full of industrial saccharin, still follows the same routine.
The audience projects themselves into the character, and the thrill they get from it, and they can use the star's clothing style as an imitation after walking out of the cinema. Merchandise is a medium between the star and the audience, imitating the star's clothes or hat, becoming a way to change oneself.
Businesses and capital stimulate people's material desires and drive people's consumption desires through popular images and **. Words, vocabulary, and images are **, which makes it very difficult for people to resist pan-entertainment, consumerism and **ism.
Chapter 5 Consumption Mentality: Psychological Changes Brought about by Commoditization.
How did consumerism and the desire to consume come into being?
In a self-sufficient agricultural community, where the individual survives in the collective, the mentality of individual consumption desire and individualism is not accepted by the collective, because it is incompatible with the collective needs.
After the disintegration of self-sufficient agricultural communities, individuals left the group to earn their own lives, and the rise of autonomy, self-expressionism and individualism, coupled with newspapers and magazines and other popular ** emphasizing individuality and individual expression, the once suppressed desire for individual consumption began to take root.
As a result, the concepts of "bearing" and "virtue" were gradually diluted and replaced by concepts related to "individuality". In all kinds of **, there is less and less praise for the qualities of simplicity, economy and responsibility, and more pen and ink are spent on highlighting personal charm, attractiveness and charm.
Consumption behavior, which was once condemned for being extravagant and reckless, is gradually being accepted. Capital, businesses, and enterprises are doing their best to create consumption opportunities, first of all, for young people. For example, peddling the new concept of "youth". They advertise youth as a lifestyle that can be achieved through consumption, and cultivate and maintain their youthful state through the purchase of specific products such as skin care products, fashion clothing, etc., that is, through consumption behavior. In this context, "young" has become a mainstream value and a symbol of success in society, prompting people of all ages to imitate and pursue, and individuals continue to invest time and money on the road of pursuing youth, thus promoting the development of the corresponding consumer market, and the whole society is controlled by this admiration for youth to a certain extent.
In addition to the change in consumer mentality, consumers are also concerned about commodity symbols. Because, people can build and showcase their social identity by using specific products and specific services. As a result, some people show their self-worth not by trying to improve themselves, but by owning a certain product.
People's consumption mentality changes with the change of goods, and they are forever dissatisfied with what they have. Human needs are infinitely expanded, the tension of desire is constantly moving towards new products, and the feeling of not being satisfied is re-aroused again and again, becoming the core of this commodity economy.
Coupled with the constant repetition of hedonism, consumerism and other concepts, the original unacceptable consumption mentality has become reasonable and normal.
Chapter 6 Social Engineering: Consciousness Management and the Legitimization of Business Order.
How did PR come to be a composite of consumerism and capitalism?
After the boom in print, the public began to be born. The spread of power is no longer a big deal, but the spread of ideas is even more important, because ideas are the most powerful social power.
A whole new business world is at work, with large, international, multi-sectoral companies controlling markets and causing social unrest. This is in this context. As propaganda specialists, they know how to "flatter and curry favor" with the public**. Their job is to maintain the relationship between the company and the public and relieve the tension in society.
The book mentions the British propaganda model, arguing that in order to induce thoughts and control perceptions, what needs to be done is to give the people a flood of information, not to control and censor it. It is a mistake to impose propaganda on a single channel, which will arouse suspicion and distrust among the population and give the opposition an opportunity. On the contrary, the pluralism and diversity of information should be maintained. They provide information to all sorts of **, sometimes intentionally through apparently neutral**. The aim is to create the illusion of freedom of expression in a way that induces rather than controls and prohibits it. Instead of preventing the spread of unfavorable information, it is necessary to let unfavorable information be drowned out by a continuous stream of "positive" information, so that a high density of repetitive information should continue to be disseminated, so that the information that the state wants to disseminate is everywhere.
Businesses have applied a set of theories that had been used for state propaganda to the market, and the magic weapon has since been transferred to the hands of large corporations.
Common public relations methods, the first is to promote themselves in major magazines, ** in a subtle way, to convey information hidden, such as by proposing solutions to the public to disseminate information, to "guide those who are ignorant of the world", unconsciously impose views on others, or fully repeat information, so that it can be integrated into people's surrounding environment, can achieve the purpose of taking root. Second, when encountering a crisis, find a professional public relations team to whitewash yourself, using a variety of methods, from the beginning of directly quibbling, refuting, and finding loopholes with information that is harmful to you, to the end of the development to use dazzling and overwhelming positive information, or other eye-catching information to drown out those information that is unfavorable to you and divert public attention. Third, start looking for public trust or influence** to publicize the event.
It is not difficult to see that modern society is still playing the same way as before, especially in the entertainment industry.
We read books that deconstruct consumerism, but the call for rational consumption has long been buried in the overwhelming advertising campaigns that have been released to stimulate consumption.
Chapter 7 Symbol Engineering: The Power of Advertising.
How widespread is consumerist propaganda around us? Why is it so popular?
Supply-side businesses are only profitable if there is a steady stream of manufacturing demand and factories with high operating costs. If there is no purchase demand, it is necessary to create purchase demand for the public, which is especially obvious in the female market, and a new term emerges every once in a while, but the essence is the same if the soup is not changed, such as what barrier cream and no-makeup cream.
Originally, advertising was purely for the purpose of selling, but now advertising is about creating demand anxiety first and then selling.
In the past, advertising only described the physical characteristics of the product, showing its ** and purpose, and only focused on the item itself to be promoted. The graphic revolution has fundamentally changed the language of advertising. It is no longer focused on describing the product's features, but rather praising the "psychological utility" of the product, that is, the benefits that the product can bring to society and people. Advertising, like branding, can inject meaning into items that lack meaning. The most common is to sell luxury, prestige and romance. Cars, for example, highlight the status and prestige that cars bring to people, but not the cars themselves.
Under the cues of the advertisement, the viewer projects himself into the context expressed by the advertisement, which is sometimes wonderful and sometimes anxious. This is because advertisements allow viewers to take a critical look at themselves, which in turn "causes anxiety".
Anxiety is strongly expressed in advertising, and those anxiety-inducing scenes are mostly made up of failures and public appearances, but also unfortunate events such as unemployment, divorce or illness. In anxiety-inducing advertisements, the central characters are often out of place in the environment, and the protagonists are rejected and ridiculed because they have not consumed a certain item, such as not using mouthwash. This type of advertising is especially prominent in the hygiene products and cosmetics industry, which makes viewers unconsciously anxious.
Most anxiety-inducing ads feature young women, who are the main targets of advertisers, who use this tactic to imply that they want to increase their attractiveness by spending.
These anxiety-inducing ads have a fixed structure, and the end of the story is always the same, with the protagonist being ashamed of being ridiculed and humiliated for his "little problems" (such as fox odor, bad breath, dandruff, etc.) that hinder his success in love, family, or career. Then a friend introduced him to a product (deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo, etc.) that helped him get out of the situation, return to his normal social life, and in the end, the story always ends in a happy plot.
Advertisements use this three-stage script structure (Problem Shame - Product Appearance - Solution Recovery), which suggests that consumers should be aware of their own mistakes and shortcomings, and also "redeem themselves" by adopting the right consumption behavior. The left hand sells anxiety, and the right hand sells the "antidote".
Advertising and ** also imperceptibly instilled consumer awareness. Instead of talking about production and labor, we talk a lot about leisure and wealth, and deliberately excessively those attitudes, behaviors and values that are conducive to business interests. It trumpets the comfortable material life of the broad middle class, and such propaganda fills all social spaces. Showing the identity of the product to people implies that the product can give the owner a corresponding status, and all this is done through consumption.
* It also induces comparisons through advertising, causing anxiety, especially women's bodies being made a big fuss. ** propaganda is implying that people's bodies must be exercised and improved in order to achieve the desired appearance. As a result, various plastic surgery services have appeared in the market, claiming to help people become beautiful, and merchants have also designed various promotional slogans for this purpose: "There is no ugly woman in the world." Only women who don't know that they can become beautiful. Under this propaganda rhetoric, women strive to make their image eye-catching and endearing. Both the cosmetics industry and the plastic surgery industry use this set of arguments to make people's bodies become objects to be processed and objectified.
The purpose of many advertisements is to make customers dissatisfied with the status quo, because ads that make people feel satisfied after watching them will not make money. The business world is built on this system. This illusion of "buying something to compensate for self-deficiencies" is the key to selling goods.
In addition to advertising, shortening the time of use of the product, constantly upgrading the product, creating anxiety, exploiting people's fears, and refining the functionality of the product are common methods used by capitalists to obtain continuous demand. The ideology of consumption is like water, soaking the consumer in it, so obvious, but often undetected and untaken into account. It is the most complex system of coercion and control in the world.
Advertising slogans are still around, but they are now emphasizing freedom rather than excellence, and the advertising discourse has shifted from "our products are the best" to encouraging consumers to "be their true selves", promoting people to "be themselves" and revering goods as tools for self-liberation.
Chapter 9 The New Spirit of Consumption: The Long 60s and the Revival of the Market.
With the development of society, a new spirit of consumption has emerged. The new consumer spirit is mainly coming from young people. Advertisers specialize in disseminating targeted messages to young people, offering products that are specifically designed for them. Merchants go to great lengths to provide a variety of products, information, popular symbols, values, and norms for the youth segment.
The segmentation of the market and the market has led to a growing psychological and cultural difference between children and their parents, which has not only led to conflicts between children and parents, but also within the young people's own communities. This contradiction makes the large community belonging to young people gradually become many small groups, and each of these small communities has its own exclusive and consumer culture. For example, through the unique aesthetics of clothing and other markers to express identity, through the possession and display of symbols, through the purchase of specific symbolic clothing to join a group.
Also, there are people who want to refuse to be ordinary people, so they choose to prove that they are away from vulgarity by owning something. Although this behavior belongs to the counterculture, the expression of anti-bourgeois aesthetics, it is still consumed in order to make itself outstanding. Therefore, the essence is also a consumer culture. Counterculture also needs to use specific symbols to show that it is different, so as to obtain some social benefits, or to elevate its identity.
Both mainstream and counterculture have contributed to the prosperity of capitalism. The desire to liberate oneself is equivalent to allowing the desire to consume to develop freely, and the demand will grow indefinitely. Under the counterculture system, the symbols of people's identities are updated more and more rapidly, and all this further stimulates production.
Chapter 10 Super Consumers: A Future of Exponential Growth.
How were super consumers born?
With the development of the market and the proliferation of new products, people are increasingly unable to know the background of the production of goods, which further strengthens people's fetishistic complex. In the case of food, for example, consumers are gradually moving away from the production process, and people do not see how the food they eat is grown and processed. People buy frozen fast food that doesn't even have to be taken out of the packaging and processed again, but just put it in the microwave and then eat. In this model, consumers are not only detached from agriculture, but also from the actual production of food, and may not even know what is in the meal they are eating.
The division of labor and increasingly complex production processes make it impossible for anyone to master the composition of everyday items. For high-tech products in mature industries, consumers are even more ignorant, so they are more unable to control the content of the product, and the product becomes completely abstract, which will undoubtedly strengthen people's worship of the product, and consumers are more likely to fall into the trap of sales words.
In modern society, one's identity is neither inherited nor prescribed, and one can "invent" one's own identity through consumption. For example, when you step out of a luxury car, the luxury car will say the first thing for you. Commodities have always been a tool to meet people's practical and psychological needs, and they are also a language to express people's thoughts and power relations. The marketplace has made goods a central tool for consumers to define and express themselves, thus intensifying people's desire for goods.
The insatiable desire to consume has forced consumers to be exploited by industry forever, and they are also the main culprits of all this. It is precisely because consumers have been constantly interpreting goods, seeing goods as personal values, and constantly looking for new fashions that consumers have surrendered their fate to businessmen. As a result, some people are trapped in production, while others are desperately consuming.
The world of drunken gold is woven by the pervasive consumer culture, and the consumer culture is followed by the social people controlled by capital.
In this book, the author points out the causes, drivers, changes, and essence of consumerism, but does not tell us how to get out of the trap of consumerism and how to deal with the pressure of ultra-high consumption. I think restraint from desire is the ultimate path. If I want to resist the consumption trap as much as possible, I need to maximize the value of the commodity other than the use value of the commodity, and think about whether I really need it.