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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Consumer issues
"Once again, Morris B. Holbrook has combined insightful commentary on the field of consumer behavior with a readable and enjoyable writing style. A must read for anyone interested in the latest thinking in the field." Ron Hill, Professor and Chair of Marketing, Villanova University "A delightfully idiosyncratic history of consumer research. What enthralled readers will get from his stylish exposition is a socio-psychocultural description of the consumer through the ages, along with a description of attempts to understand the consumer. Scholarly yet readable, Holbrook's history is a classic study of consumerism too. Editor's Choice." --Business Today In recent years, consumer research has emerged as an academic specialty of growing concern to marketing scholars and of increased importance on today's university campuses. Courses on consumer behavior--taught in virtually every academic program of business or management--draw heavily on work by consumer researchers. Despite this wide and growing recognition as an emergent area of study, no book appears to exist on the history, nature, and types of consumer research or on the variegated and often hotly debated issues that surround this field of inquiry. Consumer Research fills this gap by providing an account of the recent historical developments in consumer research and by showing how the evolution of this discipline has affected the research. The author offers a personal and subjective glance at how various changes in the field have come about and how they have shaped studies of consumption. Marketing scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates concentrating in marketing will find Consumer Research irresistible reading.
"A radical approach to children's TV. . . . Seiter argues cogently that watching Saturday cartoons isn't a passive activity but a tool by which even the very young decode and learn about their culture, and develop creative imagination as well. Bolstered by social, political, developmental, and media research, Seiter ties middle class aversion to children's TV and mass-market toys to an association with the 'uncontrollable consumerism'--and hence supposed moral failure--of working class memebers, women, and 'increasingly children.' . . . Positive guidance for parents uncertain of the role of TV and TV toys in their children's lives." --Kirkus Review "In this thought-provoking study, Seiter reasonably urges parents and others to put aside their own tastes and to understand that children's consumer culture promotes solidarity and sociability among youngsters." --Publishers Weekly "An important book for those desiring an overview of the toy industry's impact on consumer culture . . . it] provides a fair and well-balanced view of the industry." --Kathleen M. Carson, associate editor, Playthings
Puts forward a theoretical framework for understanding consumerism in health care and its relation to professionalism. This book explains why consumers and professionals may intuitively perceive some standards as lower or higher than others and goes on to discuss many examples of professional good and bad practice.
An in-depth analysis of the impact of public utility privatization on ordinary consumers. This text traces the history of energy and water privatization and documents the community and consumer sectors' various attempts to influence the structure of privatization and regulation. It provides data on the energy and water utilities over the first period of privatization and shows that the benefits and costs of privatization have not been shared equally. Low income consumers have been particularly adversly affected and the regressive outcomes of privatization have undercut the gains that domestic comsumers have made in some areas of service provision. Concluding with an overview of the British experiment of energy and water privatization, the author argues that the privatization settlements reached by successive Conservative governments with the privatized utility companies are seriously flawed, and that the British model of privatization is inappropriate to the domain of essential public utility service.
This book puts an end to unnecessary consumer spending by telling how to lower automobile insurance premiums, choose a good HMO or PPO health plan, reduce homeowner's insurance premiums, determine the amount of life insurance really needed, and more.
This practical and easy to understand book is about eating well. The authors include chapters on: nutrition basics and a balanced diet; how to evaluate nutrition information; vitamin and mineral supplements; 'health foods' and related products; junk foods and fast foods; additives; practical weight control; balanced vegetarian diets; the truth about sugar; 'fluid facts'; tips for teenagers; and diet, heart disease and cancer. Appendices include a listing of recommended dietary allowances, a glossary of terms, and a useful bibliography.
This text provides an overview of concepts, theories, and methods related to the study of household consumption. It summarizes the most recent data on consumption patterns and trends, together with factors that influence consumption--population trends, prices, and distribution of resources--and examines how consumption data are used by business, government, and other organizations. The work will give the student a knowledge of household consumption patterns and an understanding of how to use such knowledge. Its three general purposes, which correspond to the three parts of the book, are: to provide the tools students need in order to use information about household consumption, including major concepts and theories used in the study of consumption, empirical methodologies, and sources of data; to describe current patterns, trends, and problems in household consumption in the United States and other countries; and to show how information about household consumption is used. This text is designed for upper-division courses in consumption economics, consumer science, and family resource management.
Taking an innovative and interdisciplinary approach, Experiential Retailing moves beyond the traditional model of product assortment. It examines the history of retailing and consumption, and how cultural attitudes have changed over time. Different types of shopping experiences are described, and anecdotes and illustrations demonstrate strategies for success. Incisive, sensory, and entertaining, the text provides exciting new concepts for understanding this global phenomenon.
Holidays with Hitler tells the story of German leisure time and state-sponsored fun under the Nazi regime. Nathan Morley looks at consumerism, entertainment and travel in German society, and offers a vivid portrait of what it was like to visit as a foreign tourist seeking fun in a totalitarian state. An important part of Nazi policy was the vast Strength through Joy programme, headed by Dr Robert Ley - a brash and fanatical party member. Although Strength through Joy is best remembered for introducing the Volkswagen Beetle, it also allowed fourteen million people to enjoy annual vacations at bargain basement prices while improving the health of the population by encouraging running, hiking, swimming, and active family holidays. With millions of working people paying monthly dues, the organization amassed a hefty fortune. On the island of Rugen in the Baltic Sea, a vast resort capable of accommodating 22,000 holidaymakers began construction in 1937 - the same year the Wilhelm Gustloff, the first Strength Through Joy vessel, was launched in Hamburg. With the arrival of the Second World War, the organisation adapted, the goal being the 'cultural caretaking of the bomb-battered population and our soldiers'. Nathan Morley, employing meticulous research, tells the story not only of the Strength through Joy programme but also the efforts to organise the Olympics and disguise anti-Jewish sentiments from the thousands of visitors; the way millions of Germans spent their free time; and what it was like to be a foreign tourist as the thin veneer of a disintegrating Reich peeled away to reveal an ugly and evil interior.
The new edition of this highly acclaimed anthology continues to provide the most comprehensive, rigorously balanced survey available of modern consumerism. Written by a wide range of experts, the 42 articles--half of them new to this edition--cover today's most important consumer and public policy issues: advertising and the disclosure of consumer information, selling practices, anti-trust issues and competition, product safety, liability, and consumer satisfaction. As in previous editions, the articles are arranged according to the steps in the process. New to this edition are detailed discussions of such current issues as the costs and benefits of government regulation, advertising to children, consumer information systems, and demarketing (encouraging consumers to use less of such products astobacco and energy). The final section assesses the response of business and industry to consumer pressures.
The idea of Canada as a consumer society was largely absent before 1890 but familiar by the mid-1960s. This change required more than rising incomes and greater impulses to buy; it involved the creation of new concepts. Buying Happiness explores the ways that key public thinkers represented, conceptualized, and institutionalized new ideas about consumption. Liverant's fresh approach connects the emergence and diffusion of these ideas with changes in political processes and social policy. As the figure of "the consumer" moved from the margins to the centre of social, cultural, and political analysis, the values and concepts associated with consumerism were woven into the Canadian social imagination.
Practicas e innovadoras maneras de usar y ahorrar su dinero...
Unase a la busqueda de las ideas mas faciles y practicas de sacar el mayor provecho a su dinero.
An evocative symbol of the 1960s was its youth counterculture. This study reveals that the youthful revolutionaries were augmented by such unlikely allies as the advertising industry and the men's clothing business. The ad industry celebrated irrepressible youth and promoted defiance and revolt. In the 1950s, Madison Avenue deluged the country with images of junior executives, happy housewives and idealized families in tail-finned American cars. But the author of this study seeks to show how, during the "creative revolution" of the 60s, the ad industry turned savagely on the very icons it had created, using brands as signifiers of rule-breaking, defiance, difference and revolt. Even the menswear industry, formerly makers of staid, unchanging garments, ridiculed its own traditions as remnants of intolerable conformity, and discovered youth insurgency as an ideal symbol for its colourful new fashions. Thus emerged the strategy of co-opting dissident style which is so commonplace in modern hip, commercial culture. This text aims to add detail to a period in the 60s which has hitherto remained unresearched.
History | Food Studies A century and a half ago, when the food industry was first taking root, few consumers trusted packaged foods. Americans had just begun to shift away from eating foods that they grew themselves or purchased from neighbors. With the advent of canning, consumers were introduced to foods produced by unknown hands and packed in corrodible metal that seemed to defy the laws of nature by resisting decay. Since that unpromising beginning, the American food supply has undergone a revolution, moving away from a system based on fresh, locally grown goods to one dominated by packaged foods. How did this come to be? How did we learn to trust that food preserved within an opaque can was safe and desirable to eat? Anna Zeide reveals the answers through the story of the canning industry, taking us on a journey to understand how food industry leaders leveraged the powers of science, marketing, and politics to win over a reluctant public, even as consumers resisted at every turn.
What happens when there is almost unlimited choice? When everything becomes available to everyone? And when the combined value of the millions of items that only sell in small quantities equals or even exceeds the value of a handful of best-sellers? In this ground-breaking book, Chris Anderson shows that the future of business does not lie in hits - the high-volume end of a traditional demand curve - but in what used to be regarded as misses - the endlessly long tail of that same curve. As our world is transformed by the Internet and the near infinite choice it offers consumers, so traditional business models are being overturned and new truths revealed about what consumers want and how they want to get it. Chris Anderson first explored the Long Tail in an article in Wired magazine that has become one of the most influential business essays of our time. Now, in this eagerly anticipated book, he takes a closer look at the new economics of the Internet age, showing where business is going and exploring the huge opportunities that exist: for new producers, new e-tailers, and new tastemakers. He demonstrates how long tail economics apply to industries ranging from the toy business to advertising to kitchen appliances. He sets down the rules for operating in a long tail economy. And he provides a glimpse of a future that's already here.
The transformation of China from a major site for clothing manufacture to an intensely fashion consuming society has been widely documented. Less has been written about the making of Chinese fashion. In Fashion in Multiple Chinas, expert authors explore how a multitude of Chinese fashions operate across the widespread, fragmented and diffused Chinese diaspora. They challenge the idea of Chinese nationalism as 'one nation', as well as of China as a single reality, revealing the realities of Chinese fashion as diverse and comprising multiple practices. They also demonstrate how the making of Chinese fashion is composed of numerous layers, often involving a web of global entanglements between manufacturing and circulation, retailing and branding. Chapters cover the mechanics of the PRC fashion industry, the creative economy of Chinese fashion, its retail and branding, and the cultural identity of Chinese fashion from the diasporas comprising the transglobal landscape of fashion production.
Balkan Blues explores how a state transitions from the collectivized production and distribution of socialism to the consumer-focused culture of capitalism. Yuson Jung considers the state as an economic agent in upholding rights and responsibilities in the shift to a global market. Taking Bulgaria as her focus, Jung shows how impoverished Bulgarians developed a consumer-oriented society and how the concept of "need" adapted in surprising ways to accommodate this new culture. Different legal frameworks arose to ensure the rights of vulnerable or deceived consumers. Consumer advocacy NGOs and government officers scrambled to navigate unfamiliar EU-imposed models for consumer affairs departments. All of these changes involved issues of responsibility, accountability, and civic engagement, which brought Bulgarians new ways of viewing both their identities and their sense of agency. Yet these opportunities also raised questions of inequality, injustice, and social stratification. Jung's study provides a compelling argument for reconsidering of the role of the state in the construction of 21st-century consumer cultures.
In the first half of the twentieth century, Theodor Adorno wrote
about the 'culture industry'. For Adorno, culture too along with
the products of factory labour was increasingly becoming a
commodity. Now, in what they call the 'global culture industry',
Scott Lash and Celia Lury argue that Adorno's worst nightmares have
come true.
Peter Gleick knows water. A world-renowned freshwater expert, Gleick is a MacArthur Foundation 'genius', and according to the BBC, an environmental visionary. And he drinks from the tap. Why don't the rest of us? "Bottled and Sold" shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products of the last one hundred years - and why we are poorer for it. It's a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of commercially produced water, and every second of every day a thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than thirty billion bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars. Have we simply been hoodwinked by corporate executives or are there legitimate reasons to buy all those bottles? With a scientist's eye and a natural storyteller's wit, Gleick investigates whether claims about the relative safety, convenience, and taste of bottled vs. tap hold water. And he exposes the true reasons we've turned to the bottle, from fear-mongering by business interests and our own vanity to the breakdown of public systems and global inequities. Jewel-encrusted 'designer' H2O may be laughable, but the debate over commodifying water is deadly serious. It comes down to society's choices about the human right to water, the role of government and free markets, the importance of being 'green', and fundamental values. Gleick gets to the heart of the bottled water craze, exploring what it means for our most basic necessity to become a luxury.
The question of consumption emerged as a major focus of research and scholarship in the 1990s but the breadth and diversity of consumer culture has not been fully enough explored. The meanings of consumption, particularly in relation to lifestyle and identity, are of great importance to academic areas including business studies, sociology, cultural and media studies, psychology, geography and politics. The SAGE Handbook of Consumer Culture is a one-stop resource for scholars and students of consumption, where the key dimensions of consumer culture are critically discussed and articulated. The editors have organised contributions from a global and interdisciplinary team of scholars into six key sections: Part 1: Sociology of Consumption Part 2: Geographies of Consumer Culture Part 3: Consumer Culture Studies in Marketing Part 4: Consumer Culture in Media and Cultural Studies Part 5: Material Cultures of Consumption Part 6: The Politics of Consumer Culture
In the 1930s, the United States almost regulated advertising to a degree that seems unthinkable today. Activists viewed modern advertising as propaganda that undermined the ability of consumers to live in a healthy civic environment. Organized consumer movements fought the emerging ad business and its practices with fierce political opposition. Inger L. Stole examines how consumer activists sought to limit corporate influence by rallying popular support to moderate and change advertising. Stole weaves the story through the extensive use of primary sources, including archival research done with consumer and trade group records, as well as trade journals and engagement with the existing literature. Her account of the struggle also demonstrates how public relations developed in order to justify laissez-faire corporate advertising in light of a growing consumer rights movement, and how the failure to rein in advertising was significant not just for civic life in the 1930s but for our era as well.
How is it that a Big Mac is merely lunch in America and a symbol of cultural imperialism in France? Why did the September 11 terrorists choose United and American over any other airlines? Because they are branded, looming as larger-than-life symbols of America. Branding, to hear James Twitchell tell it, is nothing more than commercial storytelling - and it's become so ubiquitous that even institutions we thought were above branding have succumbed. And according to Twitchell, that's probably just fine. BRANDED NATION lays bare an American society where megachurches resemble shopping malls, where a university lives or dies on the talents of its image-makers, and where museums have turned to motorcycle exhibits and fashion shows to bolster revenue. Full of provocative anecdotes and penetrating analyses, Twitchell's parsing of the age of 'McCulture' is a triumph of great verve, sharp wit and, most striking of all, infectious optimism.
We live in a culture of choice. But, in an age of corporate
dominance, our freedom to choose has taken on new meaning. Upset
with your local big box store? Object to unfair hiring practices at
your neighbourhood fast food restaurant? Want to protest the
opening of that new multinational coffeeshop? Vote with your feet
In Speculative Communities, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou examines the ways that speculation has moved beyond financial markets to shape fundamental aspects of our social and political lives. As ordinary people make exceptional decisions, such as the American election of a populist demagogue or the British vote to leave the European Union, they are moving from time-honored and -tested practices of governance, toward the speculative promise of a new, more uncertain future. This book shows how even our methods of building community have shifted to the speculative realm as social media platforms enable and amplify our volatile wagers. For Komporozos-Athanasiou, "to speculate" means increasingly "to connect," to endorse the unknown pre-emptively, and often daringly, as a means of social survival. Grappling with the question of how more uncertainty can lead to its full-throated embrace rather than dissent, Speculative Communities shows how finance has become the model for society writ large. As Komporozos-Athanasiou argues, virtual marketplaces, new social media, and dating apps bring finance's opaque infrastructures into the most intimate realms of our lives, leading to a new type of speculative imagination across economy, culture, and society.
Turkey has witnessed remarkable sociocultural change under the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), particularly regarding its religious communities. As individuals with pious identities have increasingly gained access to state power and accumulated economic influence, so religious appearances and practices have become more visible in Turkey's `secular' public spaces. More than this, consumption practices have changed and new Islamic and Islamist identities have emerged. This book investigates three of the most widespread faith-inspired communities in Turkey: the Gulen, Suleymanli and the Menzil. Nazli Alimen compares these communities, looking at their diverse interpretations of Islamic rules related to the body and dress, and how these different groups compete for power and control in Turkey. In tracing what motivates consumption practices, the book adds to the growing interest in the commercial aspects of modest and Islamic fashion. It also highlights the importance of clothing and bodily rituals (such as veiling, grooming and food choices) for the formation of community identities. Based on ethnographic research, Alimen analyses the relationship between the marketplace and religion, and shows how different communities interact with each other and state institutions. Of particular note are the varied expressions of Islamic masculinities and femininities at play. Appealing to a cross-disciplinary readership, the book will be relevant for scholars within Turkish Studies, Gender Studies, Islamic Studies, Fashion, Consumption Studies, Sociology of Religion and Middle Eastern Studies. |
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