FREE ESSAY ON DEFINION AND CONSTRUCTION OF A CONSUMER

DEFINION AND CONSTRUCTION OF A CONSUMER

1) A consumer is socially defined as someone whom is pressured into buying items forced
upon them my capitalist methods. They are also people who believe that if they buy a
particular item it will make their lives better. Society has forced consumerism unto
people and it has increased over the last century.
A consumer was not constructed until the 19th century, when the times emphasized
moderation and self-denial. At this time workers were to be frugal and save their money.
Most of the time the typical family produced most of what they needed and had few
household possessions. The families had little arousal of desire because there were no
prepackaged items with brand names and most of the items were displayed in bulk. The main
creation of the consumer was the creation of advertising. The goal of advertising was to
aggressively shape consumers desires and create value in commodities by imbuing them with
the power to transform the consumer into a more desirable person. In the 1880's there was
only about 30 million spent on advertising in the US, by 1910 it was up to about 600
million, and today 120 billion is spent on advertising in the US alone. Another way of
making people consumers is the development of department stores, where they market goods
in ways that arouse desire to the people. They also use different display and
presentation techniques to inspire purchases. They also try to create consumers by making
buying easier with consumer credit, this give the consumer a charging account or the
ability to pay over installments. There are many things that helped transform people in
to consumers including the institutional transformation, which is a major social
institution redefining the function to promote consumerism. Some of these institutions
are education institutions, for example creation of business and fashion design schools
that were developed in the early 1900's. Others include government institutions, which is
divided into local and federal governments. The local governments make up shopping
districts and zoning regulations and federal governments have a commerce department,
whose main goal is to encourage consumption of commodities. The federal government also
endorses retail, cooperative advertising and individual homeownership, and single person
dwellings. All this is just to promote consumerism