Waking Up

Three motifs from Plato's Republic are summarized and related to contemporary consumer culture: the allegory of the cave, the three-part model of the soul, and the discussion of wage-earning. Reflection on these motifs supports the anti-consumerist educational program called for by Pope Francis in his environmental encyclical Laudato Si. Studying Plato can encourage people to think of consumerism as a waking dream, and to identify with their rational, altruistic desires. Such identification discourages thoughtless, environmentally destructive consumption.

“Money Worlds” and Wellbeing

Tatzel proposed a theory of money worlds and wellbeing comprised of four prototypical consumer patterns based on whether consumers are high/low on materialism and simultaneously tight or loose with money. Tatzel proposes that the four prototypes (value-seekers, non-spenders, big-spenders, and experiencers) differ strikingly along many values, attitudes, and behaviors. This study uses data from 1,016 U.S. student consumers to test empirically the typology and differences. A cluster analysis confirmed that a four-cluster solution best represented the data, supporting Tatzel's model. Subsequent ANOVAs showed that two of the four groups differed predictably in the hypothesized directions. Significant differences between big-spenders and non-spenders appeared in levels of price sensitivity, status consumption, generosity, brand engagement, worry about debt, and spending. The other two groups, value-seekers and experiencers, fell between them. The findings partially confirm Tatzel's theory and suggest that “money worlds” are one way of conceptualizing consumer culture.

Advertising and Consumerism in Nigeria

Nigeria-based telecom companies yearly generate revenues that surpass their returns in other countries due to their growing number of subscribers. In spite of this development, the consumer has, in various ways, remained exploited by telecom companies. Two ways in which such exploitation has been perpetrated include misleading promotions and unsolicited commercial calls. This chapter examines these two anti-consumer paradigms under three principal research questions: What is the state of consumerism in the Nigerian telecom sector? What are some of the anti-consumer cultures prevailing in this sector? And how do consumer protection associations come to terms with these anti-consumer practices? The chapter is thus divided into three main parts. The first part provides a conceptual definition of consumerism. The second part explores consumerism in the Nigerian telecom sector, and the last part deals with misleading advertisements and unsolicited commercial calls as forms of anti-consumer practices.

Consumerism, Violence, and Dehumanization

This chapter proposes that some consumers risk becoming dehumanized by the current onslaught of marketing approaches. As these buyers are bombarded by advertisements from numerous media, they become shaped in ways that make them more vulnerable to the powers behind the marketing. This ultimately creates a vicious dynamic circle which must be exited if an authentic self is to emerge and survive in this dehumanizing, violent environment. This essay explores not only the reality of this “vicious dynamic circle,” which often begins in childhood, but also some means of escaping from it: (1) recognition of the dehumanizing process occurring, (2) recollection of Western culture's two foundational metanarratives—Greco-Roman rationality and Judeo-Christian spirituality, (3) understanding what is needed to experience an authentic self, not one shaped by marketers' strategies, and (4) willingness to live according to self-chosen values culled from deep thinking about what is most authentic and precious in life.

Consumer Persona

Religions have traditionally been used to explain the differences between peoples. However, this chapter aims to use religion, in this case Buddhism, to develop a segmentation scheme for international applications. It is aimed to improve the power of prediction of the segmentation schemes in terms of marketing mix stimuli response. The identification of the Buddhist temperaments would be useful in determining the response patterns observed in individuals. Application of this chapter includes developing segmentation for communications that are enabled by technology to tailor-make offers and messages to individuals depending upon their temperaments. Recommendations for future research includes using big data applications in order to determine individual temperaments as an alternative methodology for analyzing the consumer.

The Spirit of Capitalism vs. the Spirit of Consumerism

Max Weber's protestant work ethic linked the Calvinist doctrine of election to the rise of capitalism. Weber saw the “worldly asceticism” among Calvinists as the motive for the hard work and savings that are required in capitalism. Though this theory has both detractors and critics, it remains dominant in both academic and popular writings. When this typology is extended to include consumerism, however, it fails, since the doctrine of election is not compatible with choice, which is the leading characteristic of consumerism. Arminian/free-will theology, on the other hand, has choice as its leading characteristic and practice. American evangelists asked their listeners to stand up and choose Christ at roughly the same time and in the same way that advertisers asked consumers to choose their products. Thus, a new typology is warranted which links the free-will theology of American evangelicalism to the choice that characterizes modern consumerism.

Youth Consumer Practices and Social Alienation

This chapter argues that traditional institutions (education and the family) have lost their influence, and consequently, among youth, there is a marked presence of deficiencies in their lives. As the main focus of society, mass-consumerism is implicated as a wide-ranging source of manipulation involving the consumption behavior of the young. How much independence-seeking subcultural groups can claim independence from the prevailing wider culture is explored. Many diverse sociological persuasions are examined in the search for workable explanations to account for the phenomenon of youth alienation in the Western world.

The Consumption Performance

Building on the sociocultural dimension of consumption, this chapter sees consumption as the interaction between individuals, products, and meanings. One of the frameworks within consumer culture theory, symbolic interactionism, further explains this co-creation of meaning, building on the idea that people are creating their reality when interacting with one another. A theory providing us with greater detail in how people interact with one another is role theory, according to which people play various roles in their lives, some with greater and some with lesser importance, and each one of them is accompanied with certain expected behaviors. One of the roles we play in contemporary societies is that of a consumer, providing us with an explanation of why the things we expect from consumption change over time. In this, the above will be analyzed parallel to the identification of constructs from the marketing literature for the proposed framework.

Mimetic Desire as Illustrated in The Joneses

Individuals' participation in the marketplace has exceeded all projections. As opposed to a leisure-based utopia that was predicted by many, even with most basic needs being satisfied, most individuals continue to strive to obtain more and more income to participate in the marketplace at progressively higher rates. This chapter examines this seemingly counter-intuitive reality. Specifically, this phenomenon is explored within the theories of Rene Girard, where the concept of mimetic desire is discussed and advanced as a primary motivation behind most present-day consumption. The movie, The Joneses, is the used as an avenue to illustrate the theories of Rene Girard. Several conclusions are drawn.

Consumerism and Self-Construction

Self-construction is a process by which a person exercises self-governing agency and fashions his or her own identity, creatively weaving together the various values, beliefs, loves, and aesthetic tendencies that ultimately make a self. Though consumer culture seems to provide the raw materials necessary for self-construction using the meaning-making and signaling capabilities of products and brands, consumption-based projects of self-creation will likely falter because of structural features of desire-formation in that setting. For projects of self-creation to be meaningful, the choices about what kind of identity to form must (1) flow from reflective processes and (2) be based on grounds that the agent him or herself can endorse—two conditions necessary for self-governing agency. Yet desires in consumer culture are often hardened into what Kant calls “passions,” a kind of desire that precludes and overcomes reflective processes thus undermining the self-governing agency that is required for self-construction.