Historic Roots of Consumer Culture 10/22/2013 7:31:00 AM

Growth of Advertising
Advertising as producer-driven vs. market-driven
o Producer-driven
Advertising creates needs
o Market-driven
Advertising responds to needs
Producer-driven forces
o Results of technology advances during the industrial
revolution (early 1800s to late 1800s in the US)
Machines enable mass production
Nationally branded goods emerge
90% of clothes manufactured by the 1890s
whereas 80% use to make their own
Breakthroughs in transportation enable mass
distribution
Railroads, steamships
Need to stimulate demand for nationally branded goods
Marketing techniques
Ex: newspaper advertising
Patent medicines advertising
o Tonics as cocktails in disguise
Contained alcohol (up to 80%),
cocaine, morphine
o Made people sick, alcoholics, drug
addicts
Advertising promoted as cure-
alls
o Led to pre-advertising regulation
Market-Driven Advertising
o Response to urban and mobile society
Geographic mobility
Social mobility
o Urbanization
City life=world of strangers
New kinds of public places
Train travel
Very different than travel by foot, horse, or
wagon
Comfortable
Socially distinctive
Public space
o Anonymity
Youre surrounded by strangers
in a train station
Department stores
Made themselves great stages
o Acted as social centers
Women would dress to impress
when shopping
o Created longing
Lavish displays
Jewelry, fur, art
Democratized envy
Not everyone could have
them, but everyone
wanted them
Described as monsters,
inventions of the devil,
vultures, producers of
crime, sorrow, and
disgrace
New public places and affirmation of identity
Not a concern in small towns
Increasing mobility increasing anonymity
o Identity formed and expressed
through consumer goods
Consumer goods are expressive
and signifying
Visible symbols of inner
worth
Consumer goods as Aspirational
(ex: fashion)
consumption today may
do more to mask social
standing than to express
it.
Store bought goods and growing concerns over
quality
No longer making goods or buying them at
the neighborhood store
Brand names offer consumer protection
o Offer familiarity
o Predictability
o Reliability
o
Advertising provides information about what
goods are available, where, and at what price.
Department store advertising and catalog
advertising, for example
o Newspaper advertising for department
stores
o Consumption and Social Class
Theoretical approaches to understanding the role of the
consumer goods in communicating social class
Thorstein Veblen
Theory of the Lecture Class
o Aristocrats, the social elite
Status=wealth
Two ways to communicate wealth
o Conspicuous (flaunting) leisure
Abstain from labor
Employ a lot of servants
Play sports
Tennis, cricket, polo
Unproductive learning
Dead languages, useless
knowledge
o Conspicuous (flaunting) consumption
Luxury goods
Latest fashions from Paris,
store bough
Host extravagant parties and
balls
Over-indulgence
Drunkenness, foods
Conspicuous consumption was
most important for
communicating wealth in big
cities
Pierre Bourdieu
Distinction
o More modern, 1930s
Taste determined by amount and type of
capital (social class)
o Learned at a young age
Differentiates between two types of capital
o Economic capital
High vs. low wealth
o Cultural capital
High culture vs. popular culture
Old vs. new world
Classical music vs. pop
music
Art galleries vs. picnics
Reading about politics and
philosophy vs. romance
novels
Friedland et at. (2007)
Capital, consumption, communication, and
citizenship:
o the Social Positioning of Taste and
Civic Culture in the United States
Critical Perspectives of Advertising & Society10/22/2013 7:31:00 AM

Critics of advertising and consumer culture
View advertising as persuasion only
View consumers as passive

Advertising as Persuasion
Critics tend to view advertising as persuasion rather than information
o Compare to Market Power School (as opposed to Market Information
School
Only now were talking about the effects of advertising on
consumer society
Advertising as a result of mass production
o Advertising stimulates demand
Creates needs
Shapes behavior
Induces participation in consumer society
Where materialism plays a central role
o Advertising produces consumers
Ads were to break down resistance to consumption
Convince individuals that it was morally justifiable to
consume, to spend money, and to gratify desires (Kellner
1995)
Create problems and offer products as the solution
Advertising prays on anxieties, fears, and uncertainties
Commodity Self
o Advertising transmits the message that buying and consuming will solve
problems and bring about happiness, social, and sexual (Kellner 1995)
Compare to Mens Health and branded masculinity
Makes men insecure
Adonis Complex
Sell them the solution
o Key to masculinity is wearing the right
clothes, driving the right cars

Consumers as Passive
Critics tend to view consumers as passive rather than active (Sheenan 2004)
o Active consumer
Choose what to attend to, what to process, and what to avoid
Critically evaluate messages
o Passive consumers
Powerless over advertising
Culture Industries
o Advertising, fashion industry, and consumer society
Creates passive consumers, dupes (idiots)
o Belief stems from the Frankfort School of Critical Theory
Originated in the 1940s at the Institute for Social Research at the
University of Frankfurt
Scholars fled to the US during the rise of Nazism in Germany
When they arrived, they were very critical of American
capitalist society
Mass-produced contemporary culture
o Culture industry
Critiques of culture industry
1. Substitute for genuine experience
Horkheimer & Adorno
o Cultural products are homogenized
(standardized, uniform) as opposed to
creative expression
Provides us with substitutes for
genuine experience, for love, for
curiosity of mind (Kellner, 1995)
o compare to The Matrix
2. Fake identity (pseudo-individuality) and freedom of choice
Marcuse
Advertising defines individuality and freedom
in terms of possessions, consumption, and
style, as opposed to thought, action, dissent,
rational behavior, and autonomy
o Individuality is constructed and
promoted for purposes of manipulation
and social control
Advertising and fashion combine individuality
and conformity
o To what degree can we express our
individuality or exercise freedom of
choice through mass-produced goods?
3. Manufactured image
Advertising and fashion create a manufactured
image
o According to Adorno, individuals are actually
slaves to the ever-changing demands of the
fashion industrys new commodities, which
act like a capricious and tyrannical deity of
old (Kellner 1995)
Commercialization of the Calendar 10/22/2013 7:31:00 AM

Paths of Commercialization
Trade Publications
Window Displays
Advertising
Greeting Card Industry

Trade Publications
Offer ideas and suggestions for marketing, method, and strategy
o Ex: Flower trade
American Florist (1885-), Florists Exchange (1888-),
Florists Review (1897-)
Six more by the 1920s
o Ex: dry goods fed ideas to department stores
Easter, in common with the other the other
great festivals of the year, has already been
recognized as a basis of trade attention, and,
while it commemorates an event which is
sacred to many, yet there is no legitimate
reason why it should not also be made an
occasion for legitimate merchandizing.... Plan
for it in your store, look far enough ahead, so
that your special sale of window display need
not be hurried....Make much of these things.
They are the life and stimulus of trade. (Dry
Goods Chronicle, 1900)

Window Displays
Adoption soared between 1880 and 1920 by most merchants of all
sizes
o Even trade journals for window displays
Christmas received the most attention, but all holidays including
Groundhog Day were as deserving special window displays
o Incorporating religious themes and civic icons

Advertising
Suggested Fourth of July Pitch: 1776 rang liberty to America. 1899
rings liberty from high prices (Advertising World 1899)
Even Thanksgiving, with Puritan roots was not immune
o Advertising tie-ins with sales on dinnerware or dining room
furniture
o Trade publications offered cuts or illustrations to be used in
ads
Turkeys, pumpkins, cornucopia, pilgrims

Greeting Card Industry
Origins date back to the 18
th
century and exchange of handmade
valentines on St. Patricks Day
o Soon spread to other holidays incluing Easter, New Years, and
Christmas
o Heavily promoted with in-store displays and reminders
o Greeting cards and holiday postcards around 1900
o 1914: National Association of Greeting Card Manufacturers
o 1913: $10 million
o 1928: $60 million
o today: 30.5 billion by 2015
Hallmark
o Everyday is a holiday to someone somewhere
o Hallmark holidays
any holiday without historic or religious roots
Grandparents Day, Bosses Day, Sweetest Day,
Secretarys day

Case Study: Black Friday
Day after Thanksgiving
Busiest shopping day of the year
o Important day for retailers
Extensive planning, advertising, promotion, etc.
Thanksgiving consumption ritual
Black Thursday is the new Black Friday
o Black Friday crowds are getting bigger
Competition for deals in a down economy
Stores opening earlier and staying open later
Save Thanksgiving
o There are certain days in this country when we get to be
with our families and give thanks. If Im at work, almost the
entire day, I have nothing to give thanks for or at least no
one to give thanks with
Target Responds:
Staying competitive
Arms race, other stores are open so they
have to be
Its what the consumers want
While cooking thanksgiving dinner, you flip
through the ads getting ready to shop the
sales after dinner
Its part of the Thanksgiving spirit
Investigating consumption rituals (Thomas & Peters, 2011)
o Four themes emerged
1. Familial bonding
Family tradition, particularly among women and
children
2. Strategic planning
Examine ads, look at deals online
3. The Great Race
Compete to get deals
4. Mission accomplished
Celebrate accumulation of heavily discounted
items
From Black Friday to
o Cyber Monday
Take advantage of online shopping deals
o Small Business Saturday
Support local businesses
Created by American Express

Rituals & Consumption
Ritual
o A type of expressive, symbolic activity constructed multiple
behaviors that occur in a fixed episodic sequence and that
tend to be repeated over time
Birthdays
Weddings
Bar/bat mitzvah
Graduation
Prom
Pending/recent birth

Case Study: Wedding Rituals
Entails full range of ritual elements and practices:
o Gift giving
o Ritual artifacts
Consumer products associated with ritual
Wedding bouquet, wedding rings, flowers
o Costumes
Wedding veil, bridesmaids dresses
o Scripted Behavior
Formal or informal guidelines that determine the use of
the artifacts
how to or how its used or done
wedding procession, the ceremony, cutting
the cake
o Role Playing
Active participants in rituals, behavior usually scripted
Bride and groom, flower girl, ordained minister,
father of the bride
Otnes and Scott (1996)
o Two-way interaction
Advertising influences rituals
Rituals influence advertising

Advertising -> Rituals
Advertising influences participation in rituals through
o Ritual Change
De Beers used advertising to position the diamond
engagement ring as a ritual artifact
1947: A Diamond is Forever
1939: 20% of American brides received diamond
rings from fiancs
by the end of the 1940s, 60% of American
women
1980s, 70% of American Women
1968 Japan, 5% of women, by 1997, 70%
Rings were not given before advertising
o Ritual Transference
Advertising affects more subtle changes in rituals
Show how ritual artifacts previously reserved for
certain ritual contexts are now appropriate, even
desirable, in other
Halloween ornaments taken from Christmas
De Beers: 10
th
Diamond Anniversary Band,
25
th
anniversary necklace, right hand
diamond ring
o Ritual Constellations
Advertising shows combination of products that go
together
Crate & Barrel ad showing what to include in a
bridal registry
Advertising uses ritual imagery outside of ritual context
o Six ritual categories
The spell
The fetish
The allegory
The antidote
The amulet
The desecration