The word ‘consumption’ often links back to food such as healthy food intake for those who do not think further than what they see in front of their eyes. The unit “Consuming Culture” has broadened the view of mine to see beyond the things that are common. The word “consume” has more than one meaning. It is more than eating but it could also be defined as “buying” or “using resources”. Consuming culture is a theory that studies the consumption choices that an individual or a society makes based on a social and cultural point of view. The current consuming culture is actually controlled by the marketers. At least, that is how it appears to be at the moment. Maybe it has started since long ago but then again, in the past, the people work to gain the basic necessity of a human need. However, if the idea is being put as it is, maybe the era has not changed all that much but it has become excessive. The reason that being said is that the basic necessity of a human need was considered a luxury. Relating back to the current era, people are working towards success. A person is considered as successful is not when they have obtained an emotional gratification but rather it is when they make a name out of themselves. Acknowledgement brings forth fame and then money. When a person has money, they can afford the luxurious things in this world. The change in time has made it possible that spending money for shopping is no longer for the sake of survival but it has transformed into an act of leisure (Timothy, 2005). The era has become more affordable and survival has become something most people no longer think about. The social standings have to dissolve but money still makes the world go round but majority items are no longer unaffordable like before unless they are set to be sold as luxury items.
The definition of a luxury item is not exactly defined by the society either. The marketer is still the ones who control the public opinion. Luxury items are not only linked to things that are scarce in terms of resources but it is the manipulation of the market that makes the public think it is luxurious. Let us take a diamond for example. It was considered as luxurious items due to its scarcity. However, in the 19th century, diamonds were found in Africa in a mass quantity which later flooded the market hence, dropping the value of the diamond. The way that the marketer control this situation is by monopolising the diamond supply market. They even created an advertising campaign that coaxes the public to keep the diamond instead of using it as an investment. Later on, they manage to link the diamond industry with marriage and even went to say that “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” because of the symbolism the diamond now carries. Diamonds are now more than just a rock. It represents love, romance and the memories that a woman create with the diamond. As if without diamonds, there can never be any romance nor can anyone create a lovely memory. This shows that the diamond marketing strategy is considered a success because it has even become a part of the marriage culture. The reason that the marketing strategy works have something to do with the fact that consumption is considered cultural since human especially, marketer loves to attach extraneous meaning onto certain items and allow it to become more than an inanimate object but something beyond that (Slater, 1997).
I began to wonder whether life is enough as it is or am I in the vicious cycle controlled by the marketer? Another reason that the marketer is controlling the consuming culture because marketing would not work if a person is satisfied with their current state. They need to feel incomplete in order for them to easily manipulated into buying items that will make them ‘better’ than they are before. The marketer has long started to manipulate a woman’s ideal body image in order to gain from them. The rise of these ideal woman’s body image started when the modern advertising industry begin (Sandlin & Maudlin, 2012). They start to define the beauty standards that a woman should have depending on the country or society they try to penetrate. This is because when a woman find that they are lacking the beauty of an ‘ideal’ woman, they are prone to buy the things that the marketer promotes to them while saying that their products can help a woman achieve the unrealistic ideal body that they have set. The marketer uses advertisement as a method to spread the ideal image that does not exist in order to exploit those that have lower self-esteem and emotionally weak (Featherstone, 1982). For example, makeup products. Everyone knows that makeup is created with chemicals. In the olden days, mercury was heavily used in the creation of makeup product. Even the current era of makeup still contains mercury at a certain level. Despite knowing that putting on makeup will ruin my face in the future, I still own several makeup products that I use. The reason that I want to own a makeup product despite being told I do not look much different when I wore makeup and not, is because I was told as I grow up that a makeup can enhance a person beauty and conceal the flaws. In Malaysia, the society links dark lips with a smoker and since it is forbidden for a Muslim to smoke, the relationship of dark lips and smoking has created an illusion that dark lips are ugly. Due to this fact, I own more than one lipstick and I become obsessed with collecting red coloured lipstick. The image ideology impact has penetrated deep into the subconscious and allowed me to self-deprecate myself. This is the emotions that marketer exploits upon in order to make me buy products that I either have enough or do not need at all.
Business is a chain of supply and demand. If there is a demand, there will be a supply. Once the supply has met the demand, sometimes there will be a surplus. In order to ensure this surplus will be able to give them profit, they need to create a situation where nobody is comfortable in staying as they are now (Featherstone, 1990). People are buying the items provided by the market with a goal in mind. It is actually more often than not that the consumption by the people who are in the middle-class income family buy things in order to fit in. This is due to the distortion created by the marketer because they hope to create a situation where the consumer would feel left alone if they do not follow the trend. Often those like-minded would buy things from a specific brand as if to signify that they are the same type of people (Richins, 2005). An easy example would be a Malaysian who consider themselves as a ‘hipster’, which by definition should be a person that follows non-mainstream things but ends up being a mainstream. These people would often buy Converse sneakers as it looks cool in their opinion and those with the same fashion sense as they are able to integrate with them easily.
The hope that everyone is able to break away from the vicious cycle of consumerism may be difficult to achieve. In order to break away from all these things, there are far too many things that a person need to abandon. The construction of the society itself is built around consumerist value. They claim that economic growth is helping the country develop. Looking at the lifestyle in Malaysia, everything requires a person to be in debt before they can obtain something such as tertiary education, a house, a car and many more. If a person buys a house in cash, the people from the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia will come knocking on that person’s door. This is because nobody should be able to afford a house or a car without getting a loan unless they are involved in something shady. The governance of a country itself is not helping those who wish to break from the consumerism cycle. Twitchell (1999) talks about the Voluntary Simplicity movement where these people who are in this movement emphasis on living more for less but they are actually focusing more on living with fewer items. It is similar to hypocrisy as the money spent to have a simple life may not be little at all. In fact, for the sake of quality, a person may buy more expensive items in hope that they’ll last longer despite having fewer things at their home. Also, the people who are encouraging others to downsize are actually involved in a marketing strategy. Some of them became a popular book author that manage to sell half a million copy of their book. In order for someone to follow this so-called lifestyle, they have to buy the book so they may learn the steps that a person can take when downsizing. In the end, there is a cost that you need to pay in order to learn about the methods of downsizing. There is a possibility that the only way that anyone could escape the cycle is to break all contacts with the current technological world and live in the middle of nowhere. Live life to the fullest by returning back to a caveman era, then it is possible to break away from the consumer culture.
As for myself, I believe it is fine to follow the flow but everyone must know not to go beyond their capabilities. It is hard enough to escape the comfort of the current resources but that does not mean we should drop everything and walk. As a human, social interaction is part of life. Rather than questioning about the consuming culture have done to each of us, maybe it is time for us to look another way and think of a way to make the world a better place. After all, the current technology era, despite being controlled by the marketer, it is no longer one hundred per cent controlled by them. We have a choice to educate ourselves and move within reason.
References
Featherstone, M. (1990). Perspectives on Consumer Culture. Sociology,24(1), 5-22. doi:10.1177/0038038590024001003
Featherstone, M. (1982) The Body in Consumer Culture. Theory, Culture & Society 1(2), 18-35. https://link.library.curtin.edu.au/ereserve/DC60262364/0?display=1
Richins, M. (2005) What Consumers Desire: Goals and Motives in the Consumption Environment, in Ratneshwar and Mick (eds) Inside Consumption: Consumer Motives, Goals, and Desires, London & New York: Routledge, pp.340-7. https://link.library.curtin.edu.au/ereserve/DC60262335/0?display=1
Sandlin, J. A., & Maudlin, J. G. (2012). Consuming pedagogies: Controlling images of women as consumers in popular culture. Journal of Consumer Culture,12(2), 175-194. doi:10.1177/1469540512446877
Slater, D. (1997) The Meaning of Things, in Consumer Culture & Modernity, Cambridge: Polity, pp.131-7. https://link.library.curtin.edu.au/ereserve/DC60262343/0?display=1
Timothy, D. (2005) Recreational Shopping, Leisure, and Labour, in Shopping Tourism, Retailing and Leisure, Clevedon: Channel View Publications, pp.15-41. https://link.library.curtin.edu.au/ereserve/DC60262344/0?display=1
Twitchell, J. (1999) Introduction, in Lead Us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism, New York: Columbia University Press, pp.1-15. https://link.library.curtin.edu.au/ereserve/DC60262356/0?display=1
