Relationship Between Advertising, Consumer Culture, And Commodity Fetishism

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ADVERTISING, CONSUMER CULTURE, AND COMMODITY FETISHISM
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The Relationship Between Advertising, Consumer Culture, And Commodity Fetishism
Introduction
Advertising, consumer culture, and commodity fetishism are related in the sense that they describe self-perpetuating economic relationships of production and consumption. Several critical theorists have underscored the role of advertising in promoting marketed consumption or what is known as a consumer culture. Advertising provides a proliferation of stylized products that promote a passion for consumption among media consumers. Over the course of the last century, advertising has succeeded in turning the ordinary person into a consumer with an insatiable thirst for new products. However, this relationship is not unidirectional since advertising is also influenced by how individuals identify themselves. Advertising is driven by consumer trends and therefore, the two feed off each other. Moreover, advertising has the effect of decontextualizing and mystifying the social relations involved in the production of goods and services or what is known as commodity fetishism. In a consumeristic society, advertising takes more prominence than the social and environmental costs of production. This essay will discuss the nature of the relationship between advertising, consumer culture, and commodity fetishism using theory and contemporary examples.
Literature Review
The relationship between advertising and consumer culture is bidirectional in that the two sustain each other in a self-perpetuating cycle. Advertising creates a consumer culture as much as the latter influences the former. The relationship between advertising and consumer culture goes beyond the idea that people buy certain products because they are the targets of specific advertisements and includes the aspect of purchasing goods because they are symbols of who we are (Bhuiyan and Rahman, 2020). The role of advertising in creating a consumer culture relates to the aspect of need creation. We live in an affluent world where people have disposable income and are not worried about meeting the basic life necessities. Advertising creates a need for spending and purchasing items we do not need but may want because they are status symbols (Harvey, 2013). For instance, the economic struggles most Americans go through are not always about feeding their families but are related to secondary wants like buying a bigger home or taking their children to a better school. These are needs that can be ignored and are in some instances unnecessary, such as in the case of wanting an iPhone. Because most people can afford to ignore these secondary needs, even if they have the surplus income, creates the problem of influencing their purchase decisions.
Advertising is therefore important in preserving the capitalistic momentum of mass production and consumption. The idea of human beings as consumers and the cornerstone of capitalism started taking shape in America in the 1920s. While people have always consumed the basic needs and have had to work or trade their possessions to attain them, there was little incentive to want more than was necessary (Berman, 2012). However, the industrial revolution of the previous century encouraged mass production and the ability to standardize products as well as realize economies of scale meant that consumers could get their basic needs at a fraction of the cost. However, while the industrial revolution succeeded in providing basic security to most people, it also presented an opportunity for the owners of the factors of production to create an economic system oriented toward profit (Seaton, 1995; Michaelidou, Micevski and Halkias, 2020). The short depression of the 1920s led the American government and economists to fear that the immense mass production powers of the previous century had succeeded in meeting the basic needs of the entire population and that the economic crisis was triggered by an enduring crisis of overproduction.
If economic growth was to take place, producers had to find a way of increasing consumption: the consumer had to be persuaded to buy more than was necessary to sustain the powers of mass production and encourage economic growth. This new economic model of capitalism welcomed the expansibility of human wants and desires to create a continuous demand for goods and services. The relationship between advertising and consumer culture is rooted in capitalism. Advertising is critical to fostering an ever-extendable consumer desire and by extension, economic growth: economic growth depends on the endless satisfaction of ever-new needs and wants (Maxwell, 1991). The advertising industry is charged with ensuring this conspicuously wasteful and unnecessary consumerism. With emergence of television sets, and more recently the Internet, advertising has become a central feature of consumerism. However, the relationship between advertising and consumer has an intricate cultural component since products and services are symbols and communicators in themselves. Although consumer culture is the dominant mode of economic growth, it also denotes a social arrangement in which satisfaction is dependent on consuming as many goods as possible.
The concept of consumer culture denotes the plethora of expectations and desires that form the wider framework of consumption activities. We live in a world where individuals have access to a broad array of goods and services to choose from. The large numbers of goods and services are specialized to meet the disparate wants of consumers (Turow and McAllistar, 2009). However, individual expectations and desires are intricate and encompass both practical and psychological aspects including ego-enhancement, self-esteem, and interpersonal comparison (Alden, Steenkamp and Batra, 1999). In a market economy where the properties of what consumers want are constantly shifting, advertising is necessary to align the characteristics of goods with customer expectations and desires (Schudson, 2015). Consequently, the role of advertising in sustaining a consumer culture is creating a need among consumers to buy goods that they would otherwise not need. The most important effect of advertising on consumers is to promote the materialistic virtues of consumption: the role of advertising is to make consumers feel they need a product and more importantly, like what they buy.
Several theories including Marxist theory, sociological theory, and semiotic theory agree in their assessment of advertising as the fuel of consumer culture. The modern individual is made conscious through media that he speaks with the products he buys: the possessions he has define his social status, individuality, and taste. Rather than assuming a lifestyle through habit, the modern consumer is constantly bombarded by subtle signals that exalt consumption as a way of displaying one’s individuality, social status, and sense of style. Consuming products is not just a social marker but also a way of life. The modern individual is encouraged to display their social status, individuality, and taste in the particularity of the goods and services they consume (Pollay, 2012). This preoccupation with consumption is not restricted to the young and the affluent but pervades all society and defines everyone’s sense of self-consciousness regardless of income or age. The media influences social values to a great degree and consumeristic messages imply that everyone can improve their self-expression by buying certain products and making lifestyle a central aspect of their life despite their age or class origins.
The relationship between advertising and consumer culture is also symbiotic in that while advertising sets the foundation for consumerism, the resulting consumeristic culture sustains the nature and focus of advertising. What people consider to be fashionable and appealing dictates the trend in advertisement messages. While advertising is responsible for creating the consumer culture of today, the emotions of consumers are what drive engagement and purchase intent (Seaton, 1995). Emotions are often informed by the cultural dimensions of the consumers. Consumer culture acts as the framework of shared understanding between producers and advertisers. The success of an advertising campaign is linked directly to how consumers perceive its message. For instance, the Super Bowl commercials have always aligned themselves with what the consumer culture is feeling. Initially, the Super Bowl commercials aimed at humor and showed funny skits. However, the commercials have started taking a social standpoint on the most relevant issues like environmental sustainability and equality because these are the predominant topics in today’s consumer culture.
The tendency by advertising companies to align themselves with the consumer culture is especially true in today’s cancel culture where consumers merge their social and political interests with the products and services they consume. Moreover, the nature of advertising is influenced by the contemporary language of the consumer culture. For instance, Apple has managed to create a large customer base because it espouses the dominant values of the consumer culture. The company decided to market streamlined products with attractive minimalistic features to cater to...