Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Consumer Behavior - General

In this wide-ranging and perceptive work of cultural criticism, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter shatter the most important myth that dominates much of radical political, economic, and cultural thinking. The idea of a counterculture -- a world outside of the consumer-dominated world that encompasses us -- pervades everything from the antiglobalization movement to feminism and environmentalism. And the idea that mocking or simply hoping the "system" will collapse, the authors argue, is not only counterproductive but has helped to create the very consumer society radicals oppose.

In a...

Choosing and using objects is a primal human activity, and I Want That is nothing less than a portrait of humanity as the species that shops. It explores the history of acquisition -- finding, choosing, spending -- from our amber-coveting Neolithic forebears to Renaissance nobles who outfitted themselves for power to twenty-first-century bargain hunters looking for...

Posing as a CEO of a fictitious direct-mail corporation, Larson infiltrated companies that gather and sell personal information to assist businesses in their marketing campaigns. He discovered the systems used to gather personal data, the staggering amount of personal information companies can gather, and the government's role in helping...

James Twitchell counters this assumption of the used and abused consumer with a witty and unflinching look at commercial culture, starting from the simple observation that "we are powerfully attracted to the world of...

Many of women's everyday experiences are tied up inextricably with consumption. In consumer culture research, it tends to be the activities and interests of women which take center stage. This collection provides a wide range of different perspectives on women as consumers, focusing on popular culture, including examinations of popular media and their targeting of female audiences. Apart from a grounding in feminism, the collection does not present a single view, theoretically, methodologically, or politically. Its contributors work across a wide range of disciplines, including cultural...

This groundbreaking book examines the relationship between the development of the consumer society and the rise of collecting by individuals and institutions. Rusell Belk considers how and why people collect, as individuals, corporations and museums, and the impact this collecting has on us and our culture.

Collecting in a Consumer Society outlines the history of museum collecting from ancient civilizations to the present. It also looks at aspects of consumer culture - advertizing, department stores, mass merchandizing, consumer desires, and how this relates to the activity...

Consumption is widely regarded as one of the most important phenomena in contemporary society, but, till now, there has been very little analysis of how consumption patterns evolve, transform and proliferate. This revealing book provides an incisive treatment of consumption on a global scale from a cultural, philosophical and business perspective.

Beginning with an analysis of how a dominant form of consumption pattern took hold in modern, capitalist, market economies, this book explores the contemporary changes and paradoxes in our consumption patterns during the transitional...