Exam Quizes
According to Enola Aird, what is the philosophy of marketing to kids?
"cradle to grave;" get to kids often and early and at as many places as possible.
Diderot effect
(i) all products bought by person aims to match persons identity (ii) introduction of new product triggers a process of continuous consumption - core of materialist ethos
Naomi Klein says that the new approach to branding (that she discussed) is built on
Connecting a brand to something vaguely spiritual
Your textbook says that models of consumption that stress utility and hedonism challenge the "class-based status-driven" models of consumption. The utility and hedonism models say that....
Consumers are making choices rather than being pushed into consumption by social forces outside of them
According to the Frankfurt School, how does mass consumption alienate consumers?
It creates a culture in which they are brainwashed to chase after their false needs and are distracted from knowing what their real needs are
Which of the following is an example of object-to-object relationships?
Nike shoes go with Nike pants
You are at a small party at the home of the owner of the company at which you work. You have just washed your hands when you realize that there is a stack of luxuriously thick paper towels next to the sink. There are also cloth hand towels hanging near the sink. You panic. You aren't sure which you are supposed to use. Which theorist of consumption would be able to explain this phenomenon to you?
Pierre Bourdieu
According to Michael Brody, what has replaced the healthy child of sports, play and make-believe?
The sick child, the "I am a consumer" child.
How did advertising change in the last few decades of the 20th century? [Advertising is very different now. How do you think it has changed?]
it has increased, we spend more money on it and it makes up a majority of our newspaper, tv and mail
Which of the following is the best summary of the criticisms that social theorists make about the way that mainstream economics approaches the analysis of consumer behavior?
"They don't even ask why the consumer wants what he wants! So, they are leaving out a BIG part of what they should be researching."
What was the era in which The Affluent Society was published? How has the American ownership of "stuff" changed since that era?
1950s, a time where everyone thought we were rich and had more money, while now even though we do have more money as a nation we consider ourselves poor
When did the percentage of Americans calling themselves happy peak?
1957 is when it peaked
The emergence of criticism of consumerism
1960's - what?-In the 1960s, a small but vocal counter culture called for a simpler way of life. 1970's - what?- Then in 1974, a nationwide oil shortage caused many people to wonder if we might run out of resources. And by 1979, even our president was questioning the American dream.
The average North American consumes _5x___ more than a Mexican, _10x__ more than a Chinese person, and __30x__ more than a person from India.
5x, 10x, 30x
Currently, American consumers buy _______ of their purchases at a store of some sort rather than on-line
90% or so
Which of the following is a positional good?
A Chanel handbag
What is the code that Clothide Rapaille (in The Persuaders) keeps talking about?
A powerful and coherent set of images and ideas that are buried deep in our minds
Your textbook points out that this culture's prevailing belief in the power of consumer choice can lead to
A tendency to put the responsibility on consumers and not on producers for the negative consequences of products like high-fat food, sugared drinks, alcohol, etc.
What do theorists mean when they talk about a "postmodern" world?
A world in which it is easy to change who you are, how you live, what your lifestyle is
Post-WWII- what fueled the suburban housing boom? Note where that money came from. What innovation made consumer purchases easier?
After the Great Depression and World War II, a lift was just what Americans wanted. And business was eager to provide it, with a little help from the government. Low-interest federal loans and spending on superhighways fueled the suburban housing boom. The expansion of credit made large consumer purchases easier. And the good life became the goods life.
Why do advertisers covet sites such as Webkinz?
Allows kids to become micro-targeted because a lot of info about them is available to the marketers.
According to a youth marketer what is a good thing in pursuit of a product?
Anti-social behavior in pursuit of a product is a good thing.
What's the point about social comparison?
As society grows people feel like they are not getting any better and are still in the relative position
Naomi Klein is concerned about a new style of advertising and marketing that ________________.
Attracts consumers by associating the product with wonderful big ideas rather than saying anything about its quality
Why have children with cell phones become a prime target for marketers?
Because 1-4 kids ages 8-12 have a cell phone and the advertisers can get right in a kids face because a lot of them have internet access.
According to Mark Crispin Miller (in The Persuaders), why are we likely to see a shrinking range of cultural products (TV shows, films) being made as these new forms of advertising continue to develop?
Because products compatible with advertising (including product placement) are more likely to be developed than those that are not
American sociology Herbert Blumer suggested that people often used a principle of "collective selection" to guide their consumption. This led them to....
Buy what everybody else was buying so that they would fit in
According to Betsy Taylor, what is being squeezed out by the world of kids marketing?
Childhood is being squeezed out of children.
Which of the following best describes the role of children in the consumer economy?
Children actively pressure their parents for commodities that they desire; children have a big role in spending family money
According to the author of your textbook, which of the following is CENTRAL to the dominant ideology that justifies the consumer economy?
Choice! Choice is good; consumers can choose what they want and "vote" by how they spend; therefore, the consumer economy is controlled by consumers.
Why is commerce is allied with cool in a battle against conformity?
Commerce wants consumers to keep buying new things and one good motivation to buy new things is to get something unique and cool that no one else has
According to theorists of commodity culture, which of the following statements is TRUE?
Commodities can bring us closer to other people and strengthen our social relationships
American social theorist Thorstein Veblen wrote about the ________________ of the rich.
Conspicuous consumption
Rickart collects sneakers. They are expensive; he particularly likes special editions and other hard-to-get ones. He has close to 40 pairs and they are displayed on racks in his "man cave" when he isn't displaying them on his feet. Rickart is engaged in
Conspicuous consumption
Researchers who look at the actual experience of purchasing products agree that ..... Consumers are chasing a pleasurable feeling that disappears almost immediately after a purchase. The most positively reinforcing part of a purchase only appears when the product is used. Purchases are most fulfilling when they are eagerly anticipated and planned. Impulse purchases provide more emotional rewards than purchases that are planned
Consumers are chasing a pleasurable feeling that disappears almost immediately after a purchase
According to Michael Rich what lays the foundation for all higher learning?
Creative play lays the foundation for all higher learning.
In The Persuaders, one of the marketers went off to study _____ because he thought that he could learn a lot about how to get people to commit to a brand.
Cults
According to Gary Ruskin, why is product placement in programming dishonest?
Deceptive because it sneaks past children's minds and gets them while they aren't paying attention.
At what age does James McNeal think you can start to think of children as consumers?
During infancy, children should be considered as consumers.
Look at this ad. What is this advertisement doing? (superbowl)
Emotional branding: Apple is a rebel, you are a rebel, buy this new product
Which of the following is the best illustration of how a signifier can become separated from what it signifies?
Even in July in Florida, Marque wears Timberland boots because he thinks Timberlands are dope (that is, cool, hip, admirable).
What did the FTC Improvement Act of 1980 mandate?
FCC no longer has any authority over the regulation of advertising and marketing to children.
According to Michael Rich what is optimal for brain development in the first two years of life?
Face to face contact, manipulation of the physical environment, and contact with people is the best thing to do for a child' development.
Which of the following is essential to mass consumption?
Factories
According to Juliet Schor what does the Girls Intelligence Agency ask kids to do?
GIA asks kids to push a product of give opinions on the products. It asks kids to be sly and exploit their friends.
About what does Michael Rich worry concerning the sexualization of young girls?
Girls can understand the concept of wearing what they're wearing (example was a 7 year old wearing a tube top), but they cannot understand the reactions they are getting from people while wearing and doing what they're doing.
What does Michael Brody call marketers?
He calls them pedophiles because of all the things they know about children.
David Korten- what did he used to do for a living? What did he conclude about this strategy?
He's worked in Africa, Asia, and Central America for the Harvard Business School, the Ford Foundation, and the Agency for International Development
Which of the following is the best example of commoditization?
Hiring a nanny to care for your children
Mass consumption is distinguished from earlier ways that people acquired things by
How much choice consumers have about the things they acquire
Which of the following is NOT mass consumption?
I go to shows during Fashion Week, look at the clothes that designers are showing on the runways, and then decide what gown I want to buy for upcoming events
According to Michael Rich, what might be an effect of a lot of early media exposure?
It can hurt a child's ability to learn and has bad effects on early learning.
What has happened to the amount of time spent in creative play by kids?
It has been declining over the past decade. 94% decline in some cases.
According to Consuming Kids, which of the following is TRUE about marketing to kids?
It has the same emphasis on symbolic advertising as marketing to adults does and so it focuses on what's cool and admired
What is modern marketing to kids based on?
It is based on symbolism. Products are based solely on their social aspects.
Why is this ad less likely to change the consumer and the consumer role than the ads done with emotional branding? (JCPenny)
It tells you how to find a bargain on something you might already want; it does not create generalized desires for a kind of consumer good or the lifestyle associated with a consumer good
Your Money or Your Life. What was it? Why would her grandmother have said that it wasn't worth publishing? Why did her grandmother know everything in it? And what does that tell us about how rapidly generational change has been occurring?
It's not about making a killing. It's not about how to buy real estate with no money down or anything of that sort. It's simply how to handle your existing paycheck in a much more intelligent way than the way that you've been handling it. That means carefully reexamining your spending habits and asking if what you buy is really worth the extra working hours it will cost you. It's the stuff that our grandparents knew. Her grandma read the book before it came out.And after she read, the next day she came into us and said, you're going to publish this? Everyone knows this. You're crazy. After only three months, my spouse and I are out of debt. We have become more atpeace with money in our life. This was in Portland.
Which of the following points was made by Gleick in the chapter from Bottled and Sold that you were assigned?
It's not that bottled water is replacing carbonated beverages; mostly, bottled water is replacing tap water and we are drinking a lot less tap water
What is Schudson pointing to when he calls national advertising "capitalist realism"?
Its major effect is to keep people believing in the consumer society and make it hard for them to think about life in any other way than consumerism
How does CBS News label internet games with products embedded in them?
Labels them as "adver-games."
Why are market researchers so interested in teenagers?
Lots of disposable income; hook them young and they can stay with your product for lifetime
What is the origin of planned obsolescence?
Manufacturers design products to have an artificially short lifespan
As consumers became able to avoid advertisements, which of the following occurred?
Marketers wove their products into TV shows and other forms of entertainment
According to Wilk, is bottled water safer or purer or better than tap water in a rich nation like the US?
No
What followed the release of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle" movie?
Over 1000 products linked to the movie, also comics and a TV show.
Which of the following is central to how those in the Marxist tradition think about the consumer economy?
People buy things to feel fulfilled but no purchases can solve the sadness and discontent created by lives that don't have meaning in them
Marta reads a lot of women's magazines. She is particularly enjoys fashion magazines, as she likes to imagine how she would look and feel in the outfits and makeup and hairdos that they display. She calls herself a "shopaholic" and says that shopping "always makes me happy."
Self-illusory hedonism
How does Juliet Schor describe the ethnographic research that follows kids into bathrooms?
She describes it as "creepy."
What does Lucy Hughes says about whether manipulating kids is ethical?
She says "who knows," which also means who cares.
What does Naomi Klein mean when she says that these new-style brands are not selling a product?
She wants us to see that they are selling us some big wonderful idea that we will fall in love with and, while we're in love, they'll get us to buy their stuff
Why did it take so long for sociologists to begin to study consumption?
Sociologists thought that studying how things were manufactured was more important than studying consumption.
What is the main characteristic of so-called "Fordist" production?
Standardization
According to Consuming Kids, some critics of consumer culture argue that advertising has no place in schools. They say that a central purpose of schools is to _____ but the purpose of advertising is to ____________
Teach you how to think; influence you so that you don't think before you buy
According to Consuming Kids, some critics of consumer culture argue that advertising has no place in schools. They say that a central purpose of schools is to _____ but the purpose of advertising is to ____________.
Teach you how to think; influence you so that you don't think before you buy
What do most parents not realize about what corporate marketers are intentionally trying to do?
That corporate marketers are trying to make the parents absolutely miserable, hence the "nag factor"
What did the Frankfurt School have to say about the culture industry?
That it distracted people from what was really going on, that it dumbed people down so they couldn't see what was really going on
How does Susan Linn think we should look at the issue of kids marketing?
That it is an issue of rights. She compares it to civil rights, women's rights, and environmental problems; says it is in its beginning stages right now.
According to Enola Aird, what is advertising trying to convince kids of?
That life is about buying, that life is about getting.
What are kids being told, when picking up stick and turning it into a wand is not enough?
That their imagination is not enough. They need something else.
According to Michael Rich, what are parents told about not getting the new educational DVD's?
That they really aren't that much better off letting their kids watch them because they're so young. There is no evidence that these videos will help, it's just another marketing ploy.
According to Susan Linn what is the primary value being sold to kids?
That what you buy is what you are,; that stuff and brands will make you happy.
The Persuaders ends with the narrator saying "we're all persuaders now." What does he mean?
The ads tell us that we "are number one" and "you come first," so we believe that we are choosing and we then persuade ourselves to buy
What does Michael Brody say advertisers who hide behind the first amendment are entitled to?
The are entitled to the first amendment, but also the shame that comes with it.
What changes in attitudes in the post-war years? Think of some products that exemplify this new approach to consumer goods. What's on your shelves that illustrates this approach?
The immediate postwar period does represent a huge change in the kinds of attitudes that Americans have had about consumption. Convenience was the new ideal, disposable the means. Use it once and throw it away.Families were encouraged to buy a new car every year. Marketers called it planned obsolescence. Products became obsolete because they were out of style, whether they still worked or not.
How has the end of the old system of advertising affected the advertising industry? Why does Rushkoff (in The Persuaders) say that "their most important pitch...is for themselves"?
The industry is panicked about losing clients, so they have to work hard to persuade manufacturers that they know what can work
What is the "giant feedback loop" between marketing and culture that is discussed in Merchants of Cool?
The media and marketers watch the kids and then sell them an idea of how to act; the kids then act that way and the media capture it as reality
According to Dan Acuff, what is missing from the youth marketing conferences?
There are no discussions about what is good for kids and how to move the community forward.
What is the relationship between use value and exchange value?
There is no relationship between them.
According to Nancy Carlsson-Paige, what fundamental message of kids marketing is really harmful and tragic?
They are being taught "I need something outside of myself to play."
What does it mean to say that consumers are "dupes"?
They are controlled by advertising and marketing and the rest of the culture industry
How do marketers communicate their messages and values to kids?
They communicate their messages as boys and as girls, keeping children separated.
Why was the consumer role initially a role that was particularly foisted - pushed on to, given to - women?
They did the buying for the household and so made more consumer decisions than men did. They could window shop when they were young and dream of buying things "once I am married"
According to Allen Kanner, what is the number one answer that kids give about what want to be when they grow up?
They want to be rich.
Where were Chicago kindergartner's taken for a field trip?
They went to PetCo.
Naomi Klein says that consumers are responsive to these new pseudo-spiritual forms of branding because....
They yearn for community and connection
Why is product placement criticized by those who worry about the growth of consumer culture?
Those watching a film or show don't know that they are seeing an advertisement and so they have no mental defenses against the ad
What's one important new way that marketers try to reach teens?
Through the peers that they admire
What does it mean to "de-fetishize" a commodity?
To understand who made it and where it came from and how it affects the physical and social world
According to Nick Russell, what is 360 degree immersive marketing?
Try and get around the child at every aspect. Kids are shown ads everyday.
According to Michael Brody, what is the difference between type 1 and type 2 Diabetes?
Type 2 Diabetes is based on a child's weight and not genetics; it is avoidable.
According to Susan Linn what kinds of baby items are hard to find?
Unbranded baby items are hard to find. Most can only be found in an upscale toy store, but most people can't afford that.
Department stores- when did they arrive, and how did they knock Ben Franklin's values out of their position of cultural dominance?
Urban department stores came in during the 1880s, basically, to create the sort of place where people would go and kind of lose themselves and meanwhile spend their money. By the 1890s, wealthy Americans proudly displayed the material signs of their success.Still, not everyone was impressed.
What was "planned obsolescence"?
Use it once and throw it away.Families were encouraged to buy a new car every year. Marketers called it planned obsolescence. Products became obsolete because they were out of style, whether they still worked or not.
We use commodities for integration when we
Use them to show that we are part of some group
Clarence doesn't make much money in his job as a kindergarten teacher. Nevertheless, he read Vanity Fair and watches HGTV home remodeling shows. He loves to get a glimpse of how the rich and famous are decorating their homes. Who would be the theorist(s) most likely to explain Clarence's orientation as a consumer?
Veblen
According to Susan Linn, what kind of generation are we raising?
We are raising a generation of kids who think they need the licensed product to be the hero (can't play Harry Potter with just a stick for a wand, you need the Harry Potter licensed want). They will not think creatively.
According to some of the social theorists that you have learned about, this cartoon illustrates one of the ways in which a consumer society affects people. What outcome of consumer society is being illustrated in it?
We do not know how value any experience that isn't part of consumer culture; the cartoon shows us someone who needs to use a consumer good to have an experience
According to Juliet Schor, what is needed to make childhood healthy in this country?
We need a government effort because parents can't do it on their own.
What is the "globalization" of consumer society?
Western products and advertising are pouring into developing countries. and it is having a huge impact in our environment. the consumption boom threatens to devour the world's reserves of oil and other resources within the life time of our grandchildren.
"I have a great T-shirt that was very cheap! Hurrah! I want to buy some more T-shirts from the same brand. I feel great about having found such a bargain." This is an example of?
What Marx meant when he said that we lose track of who makes the stuff we bought - if it was so cheap, it was probably made by people working in awful conditions and making next to nothing
What is the use value of a commodity?
What it does, how it works for the person who owns it.
In The Persuaders, we meet Frank Luntz. He is a political marketing researcher. Which of the following sums up his position?
What people do is mostly shaped by their emotions, so I want to understand and market to those emotions
What happened when the movie studios tightened up on letting kids into R movies?
What was previously in an R rated movie has moved into the PG-13 movies.
What kills "cool"?
When too many other people are doing/buying whatever it is that was cool
According to Michael Rich, what are important touchstones in children lives that marketers emotionally leverage to make money?
You take a child's attachment to something constant and use those characters they like (brands or TV characters) and put them on things. ex) spongebob on mac and cheese.
Which of the following was a major claim made by those who wanted to see more regulation of advertising to children?
Young children can't tell when something is an advertisement and so they have no defenses against ads
What's the basic idea of a disease called "affluenza"? Yes, it's using "disease" as a metaphor - but what are the components of the problem that the documentarians have identified?
affluenza is spending so much on things but always feeling empty
The desire for consumption became "democratized" when....
an ever-larger proportion of the population could come into stores and look at the goods displayed there
Which of the following is a central theme of the documentary Tapped?
because everyone needs water, huge profits could be made if the country got rid of public drinking water and made all drinking water into a commodity
Why do (did) people go to malls?
because of all the advertising saying shopping is therapeutic and it will make one happy
Why does Wilk say that no cost/benefit analysis can explain the international trade in bottled water?
because the environmental cost (plastics, fossil fuels for transportation) is always insanely high, much higher than any benefits that come from the water
But what did business executives want to see happen?
business executives feared a lag in consumer demand might send the whole economy crashing down. They claimed that human wants were insatiable, then looked to psychology to stimulate spending.
Fastest growing segment of consumer market?
children are
The textbook stresses that, in the city, consumption became an essential part of .....
creating a distinctive identity
Newsmakers who can create a "buzz" about a brand are...
cultural intermediaries
The textbook describes a transition from department store to mall to "big box" to "festival marketplaces." From the textbook's sociological perspective, what explains why one kind of place replaces another?
each new kind of place seemed more wonderful and magical than the one that came before it
According to Colin Campbell (The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), modern hedonistic consumption is based on _______ but traditional (premodern) hedonistic consumption is based on _______
fantasy, like imagining how strong you'll be if you have these amazing new sneakers; physical pleasure, like eating
What's the GDP and why do some social critics argue that it is a terrible measure of how well the economy is doing. What's the alternative GPI?
gross domestic product, the GPI, or genuine progress indicator., The GPI takes into account 24 aspects of our economic lives that the GDP ignores. They start with, for example, the value of housework and volunteerism. We add for that. We subtract things like the costs of crime, the costs of car accidents, the costs of family breakdown. While GDP continues to rise, the GPI has been falling since 1973.
In the chapter that you read from Bottled and Sold, Peter Geick argues that the bottled water industry....
has put a lot of effort in creating widespread mistrust of public water
Which of the following is a recurring theme in Wilk's article on "Bottled Water - the pure commodity in the age of branding"? [Select all that are recurring themes.]
if everyone gets used to drinking bottled water, it will be very easy to forget the idea that clean cheap drinking water is something that every government should provide
In what way are the newer place of consumption MORE exclusionary than the first places of consumption?
in the department stores, almost anyone could come in and look around; the more recent spaces of consumption are in locations that often exclude racial minorities and people without a lot of money
What' is "buy nothing" day?
is a day to buy nothing and as a protest against consumer culture
According to Wilk, why is it better for marketing to make your product's meaning "ambiguous"?
it can have a different value for different people, so it can sell to a broader range and greater number of people
From the perspective of the sociology of consumption (as developed in your textbook), why would the "privatization of public space" be considered a social problem?
it increases the proportion of human life that is controlled by profit-making forces
What's "voluntary simplicity"? Think about Celente's predictions that "Today's teens and preteens are going to be... very antimaterialistic." We'll talk about what got in the way of that prediction!
its about voluntarily living a life of simplicity
What's the "uncommercial?"
its commercial against the spending of our society
The documentary shifts to look at a conservative Christian preacher (Dobson, Focus on the Family) and an evangelical Christian congregation (led by Pastor Ted Haggard, who would later crash and burn in a huge scandal but, at the time, was a Really Big Deal). What's the point that the documentarians are trying to make here?
looking that we are treating relationships like as if it were same as shopping because we leave our spouse for someone new, we are also in this rat race we don't have time for stuff that really matter
Ratio of those who declared bankruptcy to those who graduated from college?
more than a million americans declared bankruptcy more than graduated from college.
Presidents and consumption- Jimmy Carter was the last one who ________________. What have the politicians since then argued? What's the point that the documentarians are making here?
no presidential candidate has dared challenge the goal of infinite economic growth. they pledged to grow the economy faster than their opponents could.
By the age of 20, the average American has seen _____ commercials. [In 1997, remember. How is that likely to have changed?]
one million
"On average, each one of us will spend _______ watching TV commercials," says the documentary. Obviously, "one of us" is "an American in the 1990's." [Think about how that has changed and why.]
one year
Caitlin makes the point that.... [Select all of the answers that are correct.]
poor people have less education than more affluent people, so they are more susceptible to marketing, poor people compare the cost of bottled water to the cost of other bottled beverages and, so, it makes sense to them to buy it, poor people aren't stupid for buying bottled water: they aren't comparing its cost to tap water but to drinks like soda and, so, it seems like a good deal
As the industrial revolution developed, "labor and religious leaders urged that productive new technologies be used to ____________________. "
religious leaders urged that productive new technologies be used to give people more free time instead of more possessions.
How did Americans get the money that they needed to increase their consumption in the last part of the 20th century?
saving less and working more
Wilk writes about how bottled water is connected to technology, purity, nature and lots of other ideas. This is ______ analysis, as it shows ______. [The section in front of the semi-colon goes in the first blank; the section after the semi-colon goes in the second blank.]
semiotic analysis; that the idea of bottled water is connected to lots of other ideas in the culture
Schudson says that national advertising shapes the culture as it....
shows us lives worth copying and tells us that life is good and progress is happening, What is product placement?, When a product shows up in a TV show or a film as if it is a natural part of the action, In The Persuaders, people keeps talk about "the lizard brain." What do they mean by that?
How do stores like Wal-Mart create an "enchanting" place of consumption?
so many things, from so many different categories, displayed in giant stores -- dazzling to many people
What's the treadmill?
so no matter how much one shops they are in the same position and being on this endless treadmill
What is meant by a "cultural intermediary"?
someone who works between the consumer and the commodity and tells the consumer what to think/feel about the commodity
What did the documentary (Tapped) say about what we know about the relative safety/cleanliness of tap water and bottled water?
tap water is tested constantly; bottled water is never tested -- so, it makes more sense to trust tap water
Think about this sentence- "Since 1950, American alone have used up more resources than ________________"
than only one who has lived before them
In the section about service workers, the textbook stressed
that service work can be emotionally draining as well as poorly paid and relatively dangerous
I went shopping and bought a bright blue shirt. Nothing in my closet matched it, so I bought a new pair of jeans next week. They look perfect with it! This is called
the Diderot effect
Gap between rich and poor- what about it? [This is a difficult concept to put in a single chart. In class, we will be looking at a couple of different ways to depict this pattern of inequality. Just note what the documentarians say about it - and then know that this is a trend that began in the 1970's and has become more pronounced with every passing year.]
the gap between rich and poor is the biggest in the US, poor kids feel like they are being deprived and feel worthless if they don't have these expensive materials
Which of the following was argued in the documentary (Tapped)?
the government pays to keep the water clean and the private companies get to bottled that clean water: how is that fair to taxpayers?
Changes in house size between the 50's and the era of the documentary?
the house have grown so large that the size of the garage was the size of a home in the 50s
Why do the documentarians bring in historian David Shi? What point is he making? Why, if the documentarians want you to believe that consumerism can be tamed, is it important that he make that point and that he be correct in his analysis?
the idea that the good life is a simpler, less acquisitive life runs deep in our heritage.
From the perspective of a sociologist of consumption and as stressed in Chapter Four, which of the following is the biggest shift that has occurred as e-commerce (on-line shopping) has become a bigger share of the consuming economy?
the pleasure of consumption is now in the act of purchasing ("the click") rather than taking physical possession of what you have bought
What does the consumer boom look like to poor people? In what social strata has that boom been concentrated? [Think about consumption and the poor. We will be looking at how social class position shapes consumption decisions later in the class.]
the poor felt like they should be able to afford these expensive items and felt more and more deprived
The Adams family, in Colorado. What are they illustrating?
the reality of being in debt
Gleick (in the chapter from Bottled and Sold) points out that the bottled water industry has a powerful ally in.....
the restaurant industry
Discussions of regulation in the documentary (Tapped) focused on
the strong likelihood that dangerous chemicals are in the plastic bottles used in the process
What is the importance of window-shopping and other ways of enjoying places of consumption even if you are not spending any money?
these encourage people to fantasize about buying and to enjoy fantasies of what buying might do for them
What has happened in kids' research and marketing in late 20th century? [We will be returning to this, too, in reading and on-line work.]
they are starting on them earlier and earlier and spending more money on them. they have conferences on how to reach and market to children, they are doing more research to see what kids like
What does this documentary say about malls in the late 20th century?
they had more shopping malls than high schools, people go and more likely but based on impulse buys
The documentary (Tapped) seems to conclude that the best way to deal with recycling is
to require a relatively high deposit on recyclable bottles
A major problem with planned obsolescence is
vast amounts of garbage as the old commodities have to be disposed of
Consumer debt- how large is it?
we are carrying oVer a trillion dollars in debt and it has tripled since 1980s
What has happened to Americans' savings rate? How did Americans compare to the Japanese?
we save only 4% compared to 16% of japanese.
When/why would a commodity be called a "positional good"?
when it can be used to show your social status
Which of the following is a question that Bourdieu would be interested in?
whether taking a class on business etiquette can help working class college students learn what upper class students already know from growing up in their family's environment
