Media and Its Impact on the Audience - Special Academic Support

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Consumerism is the concept of marketing developed in the 20^th century by social economists and marketing managers to encourage high consumption of commodities through intensive marketing by investing in advertisement (Stuart 88). Since they were first used, product advertisements are designed to arouse consumers desire. In this case, the goal is to enhance product purchase. Research has shown over time that in the heart of interest for every human being are desires for recognition, fame, popularity and the yearning interest of wanting to own and posses certain items. These items are common to all and are provided by companies which produce them in large-scale having established that there a demand already exists. What is interesting and makes consumerism to offer the dream of wholeness is the fact that people have the tendency to measure themselves against existing standards of wealth and appearance as a symbol of status in their quest for life styles (Harvey 135).

Style is basically the sum total of a persons outlook as perceived by others. People want to be seen in the face of success and prosperity in their ideal interests and at most desires. In the event that these desires appear to be turning into reality soon enough, humans remain in their world of constant imaginations of what an ideal world would mean for them. Individual and state controlled enterprises are the initiators of consumerism (Osgerby 76). Both make use of celebrities in their advertising campaigns. Such celebrities as musicians or sportsmen/women have a lot of influence in the market by virtue of the achievements they have made in their various disciplines. Accordingly, should they endorse a certain product the expectation is that such a product is destined to enjoy additional sales volumes.

In yet another scenario, cosmetics and many beauty products advertisement are designed using a number of images of a beauty model for example. Pictures of the model in question before switching to the new products are shown. Another picture of the same model after a few months of using the product in question is also captured. The difference is so captivating that the audience would immediately want to sample the product as well. All these efforts by marketers of beauty products all over the world have undoubtedly borne fruits given the level of success that a majority of the players in the cosmetics industry have achieved. Consumers ultimately decide to perpetually buy products which in their belief will bring them closer or precisely at the points in their lives where in their imagination is their perfect being. Therefore they end up living in utopia usually filled with dreams of what constantly want to be as opposed to what they really are as of the time (Stuart 80).

We begin to see counterfeits of people who are not original in their appearance and behaviour simply because in celebrity figures. People fake smiles because they see it on TVs as the expression of happiness and dress in fashion cloths to add more confidence because personal selling in business demands they do so if they are hoping to become for example chief executives of corporations or movie stars sometime in the future. All these are mere illusions created by consumerism, in this case using the media to lure more and more people into dispensing the products (Harvey 132).

The intrinsic tenets of a human being die gradually as they continually exude superficial outlooks to the general public at their own cost simply because the world has got its ways of defining beauty, success, wealth, strength and even health and that is what everyone wants to follow (Stuart 80).

Fordism was the technique of mass production of cars on an assembly line that Henry Ford pioneered in 1913. He depended on many individual decisions, corporate and intuitional decisions without necessarily considering peoples political affiliations. Due to his strong belief in corporate decision and individual management, he also pioneered the concept of moulding or training of individual to be able to duplicate their efforts with minimal supervision (Harvey 133).

Fords five-dollar an hour wage for eight hours of work a day was designed as motivational tool to encourage his employees to work that much. He used this as his management strategy and was convinced that if only people would get what they wants as pertaining to their needs and beyond that their unfulfilled desire then they would continuously dedicate their time to work in order to sustain their positions and their needs. His logic being that, it is necessities that push people to move out of their way to pursue an agenda which may not even involve them much. Consequently in the dawn of great depression of 1960s he increased the wages of his workers and increased lines of production with high anticipation that people would still consume just as much.

The fact that people s will was on spending more money to get more of convenient products clearly reflected on their life styles. As a system which depended on the government and private organization structure, it captured the attention and interest of many in America and in other parts of the world. Fordism contributed to consumerism through its influences in these structures leading to mass production in other companies both private and state owned because it was later considered as peoples rights to be provided with basic needs in case they could not afford (Harvey 133). Having seen his failures during the recession of the early 1930s, Ford became a proponent of personal selling whose principle is to individuate the work force and to undercut the historic patterns of association and solidarity. It seeks to develop each man to his highest state of efficiency and prosperity. This technique requires managers to approach workers in ways that would minimise the possibilities of resistance.

Not everyone was included in the benefits of Fordism and they were to be sure of abundant discontent even at the systems interpretation. When a people begin to feel discriminated against, they often resort to protest. Style can offer the resources to do so against a given authority. In the case of Fordism, wage bargain was confined to certain sectors of the economy and certain states where stable demand could be followed by large investments in mass production technology. In addition, inequality still prevailed. This produced serious social tensions and strong social movements on the part of those who felt sidelined.

Movements based on gender and ethnicity determined who had access to privileged employment and who could not even be hired. The prevailing inequalities were difficult to sustain due to the protestors rising expectations (Buckingham 81). This was a consumerist society which operated on the principle of mass production for mass consumption, a notion which was spreading from the Fordism ideologies. And so were discontent with inequality. The civil rights movement in the United States entered into revolutionary rage that impacted the inner cities. Struggle of women in low paying jobs was accompanied by an equally vigorous women movement. A surprise of growing discovery of awesome poverty in the midst of growing affluence triggered strong counter movements of discontent with the supposed benefits of Fordism.

The extreme power of the unions strengthened their capacity to resist authoritarianism, governance and loss of control in the work place. The fondness of using such powers depended on political traditional mode of organizations and the willingness of the worker to trade in their rights in production for greater market power. Unions respond to grass-root discontent. They served their members narrow interest and dropped more radical social concerns. During Fordism the state bore the burden of the increasing discontent, sometimes culminating in civil disorders on the part of the excluded. The state was bound to guarantee some kind of adequate social wage for all or to engage in redistributive policies at some point. Other times, combating inequality meant more legal action that would address the relative impoverishment and lack of inclusion of minorities.

The legitimating of the state power depended on the ability to spread the benefits of Fordism over all the land and to find ways to deliver adequate health care, housing and educational services on massive scale by promoting gradual consumerism since it was found more viable. To the consumer-side there was more than a little criticism of the blandness of the quality of life under the regime of standardized mass consumption. Quality of service provision through a non discriminating system of state administration also came under heavy criticism. Extreme discontent led to a strong cultural-political movement when Fordism as an economic system appeared to be at its highest point. Consumers expressed their discontent at modernization process that promised development emancipation from want and full integration into Fordism. Fordism brought destruction of cultures, much oppression and various forms of capitalism also dominated. Capitalism only favoured indigenous elite (Harvey 139).

Style can still act as a point of resistance for youth groups because the current structure of consumerism violates against the freedom of creativity of consumers. It emphasises on the realization of oneself through engagement with the world. To young people, the media explores their sexual desire using imagery advertisement that put them at the fore front of media regulated consumerism. The forms of superficiality in everyday life are part of the enterprise that s/he cannot comprehend. The youth often look for leisure in satisfaction. Their immediate mode of satisfaction is consumption. Images of consumerism continually acknowledge the desire for freedom and the freedom to desire the style becomes a compensation for the substance that mass produces and markets it (Stuart 103).

The phenomenon of style as marked by the style industries gets its boost through the association made between objects and actions (McRobbie 16). This systematic association is a function of advertisement. Over the years, marketers have endeavoured to embrace this systematic association in an effort to ensure that they realise a higher turnover for their products. Over the years, social marketing and the concept of consumerism have proved to be useful tool for use in the advertising of products.

Works Cited

Buckingham, D. Introduction: Young people and the media.In Reading audiences: Young people and the media, ed. David Buckingham. Manchester: Manchester University Press,1993. Print.

Harvey, David. Brief Review Of Neoliberalists. New York; Oxford University Press: 2007. Web.

McRobbie, Angela. Cosgrove, Zoot Suits and Second Hand Dresses. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Print.

Osgerby, Bill. Youth, media and Culture in the Asian Pacific Region, Eds by Rodriguez, Usha and Small, Belinda New Castle: UK Cambridge Scholars, 2008. Print.

Stuart, Ewen. The manufacture of Desire: Media. Popular culture and everyday life. USA.New Jersey: Transaction, 1996. Web.

Williams, Rosalind. The dream world of mass consumption. Eds Mukerji and Schudson. USA; Berkely: University of California Press, 1991. Print.

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