Going back to tradition and the original meaning of consumerism as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, Consumerism is, “The state of an advanced industrial society in which a lot of goods are bought and sold.” ”When too much attention is given to buying and owning thing.” We are all living in an era where consumerism is no longer considered a novel thing, it’s penetrated into our every day lives and let alone can we consider this to have too much emphasis and focus.
Do we find ourselves paying attention to these things? Do we forget that consumerism is bombarding us in our faces everywhere we are, in every part of our lives?
In affluent cities, living in a time where access to capital is readily available, the consumer has a myriad of choices, every second, every minute of every day, to make a purchase, either on impulse or through cautious processing.
Delivery of a game through your mobile phone, transacted in a matter of seconds, purchasing your McDonalds delivery online warrants you a $1 discount off your total purchase, all at our finger tips, all in a matter of clicks and seconds. How do you say No to these conveniences in our purchase behaviours?
I was not spared with my trip in Phuket this weekend, almost a sort of aggressive consumerism I’d say. With the salesmen, young, old, child, adult popping by my beach chair, one by one, all selling different commodities. A walking mall that comes to you, bombarding me with purchases after purchases. It came to a point where I chose not to let our eyes meet, for fear of sending the wrong signals of me falsely seeming interested in making a purchase. It was easy to say No, but hard to ignore.
Looking at what we are used to in affluent cities, the malls we patronize today masquerades as a passive consumerism that unconsciously lingers in our midst. One that we actively choose to walk into the moment we decide to make a trip to the shopping malls. The passive consumerism now turns us to subjects of material temptation. “It’s window shopping”, we’d say. Does that make us sit and ponder why we place ourselves in positions where we endlessly seek the latest and the best, when will we ever have enough?
Our outlook to the awareness of the inherent consumerism that exists today should cause us to settle for some introspection in the things we consume and pursue.
I loved your post, and here’s one of my favourite commercials which depicts an extreme form of window shopping:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRbzJ0L1Zn8
Does the little boy really need the thing he really wants?
Hello Alam! Thanks for sharing this. Very different messaging from traditional ways advertising..
The commercial does not simply appeal to central route of persuasion, it actually raises the value of a car to an elevated height that takes the peripheral route, that appeals to one’s senses and emotions. With the depiction of a child, it elevates the magnitude of desire almost of something as a desire rather than need.
How many kids will watch this from their homes and inculcate such values at the start of a young age? It does raise alarm bells!