COMM- 240: Advertising & Consumer Culture Quiz #1

When did the notion of human beings as consumers first take shape?

After World War 1, but commonplace in the 1920s

The traditional objective for making stuff was that it was useful (you make a nail because people need to build a wall); in the US, what replaced that motive and when did that occur.

Truly the 1890s were the turning point for the crucial hyper fixation or eruption of consumption.

By the early 1920s, businessmen and the economists who suck up to them were in a panic about a permanent crisis. What was that crisis?

Overproduction

What did Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes most celebrate?

Their study on the Great Depression and the revelation of buyers and their new desires to consume any sort of goods

What did Charles Kettering, head of research for what was then the largest corporation on Planet Earth, want you to experience? Why?

Charles Kettering, general director of General Motors Research Laboratories wanted consumers to experience the progression of the everlasting effects of an industrialized society. Kettering alludes that by participating in this cycle consumers will never be satisfied and therefore will make a profit for the economy.

How did advertisers in the 1950s view the luxuries of the upper class? That is, what did they want to make them?

Advertisers wanted to turn items that were once luxury items that only could be accessed by the elite into “basic necessities” for the working class.

Assuming they succeeded, what is being sold? What is being consumed?

If succeeded, advertisers would then being selling both product + status. Meaning, that an endless amount of material products could be consumed.

What does Packard mean by the terms planned, functional and psychological obsolescence?

Planned obsolescence- when manufacturers make products that have an intentional design to be little of value

Functional obsolescence- when a products quickly deteriorate

Psychological obsolescence- when a product is made to be obsolete in the mind of the consumer

If you’re a bit short on cash and want to snag a new dress at Shein, how much might it set you back?

Around $7.50 or $2.10

Edward Bernays was panicked, on behalf of his rich clients, by the rising influence of middle and lower-middle class people. What was he afraid might happen to corporate America if you got too much power? And what was his solution?

He was afraid that if the middle to lower-middle class and their attitudes would outweigh the power of the elite. To put it shortly, his solution was to take control of the consciousness of the mind’s masses through the power of manipulation (aka advertising). He argues by having that power, companies can gain control of an unforeseen government within a nation.