Consumer Society
The ultimate goal of production activity in every society is consumption. Modern society is not different from any other society but in the growing importance of consumption and the huge ability that was available for this society to achieve this growth continuously and at ongoing rates.
Verily, consumption has become a major social value and the social position of individuals is measured by the amount of commodities and services which they consume and their ability on continuing change. Fashion always in change until an individual feels that he needs to change his consumption which in turn leads to the continuous consumption.
If consumption, its quality, and variation in modern times, somewhat, define the family social status, but that was not always the case. In the past, the social status cannot be defined by the consumption of an individual but it is ironical that a person tries to cope with the life of rich people and try to change his social status by increasing his consumption.
Perhaps it is nice that the first person who pointed to the importance of show off consumption was Philbin, the American economist, in his book (The theory of the luxurious class) where he pointed out that the seeds of that class has begun to appear in USA since the end of the past century.
However, he did not look at the impact of consumption as a social value in the economic theory except when Duesenberry wrote about (the impact of imitation) when he explained that the consumption of an individual does not depend on his taste and what he wants as it is affected by the consumptions of others. Thereby, he brought the idea of interference between the consumers’ tastes in defining the consumer’s taste; which means that consumption has become a social value, where an individual does not consume what he needs only but consumes what his neighbors and colleagues consume, hence we understand the role which advertisements play in modern times.
Therefore, the most important thing that we note in the present time is that the consumption is heading to medium classes and not to higher classes. In the past, the talks about tastes and fashion were limited to a certain class of high-income, but now, modern productions are usually targeting regular consumers who form the majority of consumers. Those, regular consumers usually buy what is served to them without thinking, so they are stereotype consumers by nature.
Therefore, luxurious consumption in modern times is not limited to high classes but it is one of the most important characteristics of the middle class and lower class. Moreover, perhaps the high classes began to abstain from this stereotyped consumption.
The huge technical advancement which is available and used in the production style has provided the continuous ability on increasing production and productivity which increased the chances of consumption. The dominance of the technical on the decisions of production helped in considering the increase of production and distribution as one of the main goals which the owners of these decisions seek.
This has resulted in the increase of consumption in modern society in a way that was not previously known, and resulted in a set of values and regulations which organize the life of the community in light of increasing consumption. We have mentioned before that the increase of consumption is of great social value and an important axis in the economic activity. Increasing consumption, regardless the needs it meets, has become one of the production rules in modern times. That phenomenon had far-reaching effects on economy, as it had serious effects and consequences on social behavior.
If a consuming society has led to the continuing increase in the consumption of the underprivileged classes, it was not free of heavy criticism due to its material view to consumption and the absence of cultural background to develop an individual and his abilities. This community makes an individual a consuming device rather than a real human being.
Furthermore, this community in its ongoing quest to increase production and consumption does not only target but more production and more consumption. It is a frantically run without any apparent goal. However, this community’s quest for more production and consumption let it use vast resources to influence the tastes of consumers and direct them toward more and more consumption. Thus, this community with vast resources has managed to limit the role of an individual to consume what is offered by the market.
