Customer's Materialism And Consumerism

842 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Customer loyalty and relationships

The allure of a marketplace is down to a science. Marketers want a customer to be as engaged and willing to spend their money as possible. Some tactics are downright dirty and a perfect reflection upon the company who employs them. While customers should be outraged at such ploys, perhaps they also need to realize the effect such campaigns have had upon themselves. Customer’s materialism is a direct reflection of today’s market and America’s consumerism. One such perfect example of materialism and greed is an Orchard Supply Hardware I worked at during high school. I have been able to witness the direct effect corporate strategies have upon both employees and customers. While most people do not consider an employee a key tool to a store’s success, my experience has shown otherwise. THESIS: Associates are an integral part of a store’s identity and the way they are treated and trained is a product of America’s consumption. (You worked at OSH, you’re a good judge- ethos) ALLURE What attracts customers: Customers are attracted to Orchard Supply Hardware La Crescenta for many different reasons. Most notably, OSH is the only close hardware store location to many people living in the area. The resident’s other choices consist of Lowe’s in Burbank (about a twenty minute drive) and Home Depot in Glendale (about fifteen minutes away). The Home Depot location in Glendale is lesser known and tends to carry a smaller selection of items so many residents actually choose the Burbank location of this company over the Glendale location. Orchard Supply Hardware also attracts customers because of its legendary customer service. As many of the employees are locals or transfers from other OSH locations, customers can recognize, relate to, and connec... ... middle of paper ... ...ced in sales and therefore continued to earn rewards while those who did poorly were reprimanded and punished with further shortened schedules. The low morale reflected upon customers as they were angry with being forced to purchase worthless items and saw some of their favorite employees being maltreated and even fired. The greed of this company ran deep and its downward spiral is only just beginning to stop with the transition of ownership. CONSEQUENCES Looks like this will be longer than the requirement. Should I cut down?... • Phone system issues • OSH time • “OSHwits” • “customer is ALWAYS right” • maltreatment of employees allowed • pressing customers to buy- item of the month • new strategies to bring customers in- seasonal items vs appliances • empowerment of women • sexism • stereotypes- Small Project Pam, Do-it-yourself Dave, Handyman Dan… Need quotes

Show More
Related

  • Business Culture Counterculture And The Rise Of Hip Consumerism In Thomas Frank's The Conquest Of Cool

    758 Words  | 2 Pages

    Thomas Frank’s book entitled The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism takes a poignant look at the advertising world of the 1950’s and 1960’s, exploring how advertising played a role in shaping the next generation of consumers. Frank points out that he believes many misunderstand how important the key industries of fashion and advertising were to the shaping of our consumer culture, especially in getting Americans to rethink who they were. The industry of advertising was not conforming to the upcoming generation, instead the new consumer generation was conforming to the ideals of the advertising industry. Frank believes that the advertising and fashion industries were changing, but not to conform to the new generation, instead to shape a new generation of consumers.

    Read More

  • The Cult You’re In

    1918 Words  | 4 Pages

    Everyone is in a consumer’s hypnosis, even if you think you are not. When you go to a store and pick one brand over the other, you are now under their spell. The spell/ hypnosis is how companies get you to buy there things over other companies and keep you hooked. Either through commercials or offering something that you think will make your life better by what they tell you. For example, you go to the store and you need to buy water, once you get to the lane and look, there is 10 different types of water you can buy. You go pick one either because the picture is better or you seen the commercial the other day and you want it. During the length of this paper we will talk about two important writers, Kalle Lasn the writer of “The Cult You’re in” and Benoit Denizet-Lewis writer of “ The Man Behind Abercrombie & Fitch”. They both talk about similar topics that go hand and hand with each other, they talk about the consumers “Dream”, how companies recruit the consumers, who cult members really are, how people are forced to wear something they don’t want, and about slackers.

    Read More

  • Consumerism In 'Raj, Bohemian' By Hari Kunzulan

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many people who are driven by consumerism and many people who wish they can get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often promoted to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage Youtube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges. She expresses

    Read More

  • Affluenza: To Buy or Not To Buy

    770 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is a fact that “advertisers who promote and shape a consumer’s way of life seek to condition us to the idea that by trading our “life” for the money needed to buy their product, in hopes we can fulfill our hopes for power, happiness, acceptance, success, achievement, and personal worth.” Example the factory worker who dreams of winning the lottery and devotes a chunk of his weekly paycheck toward buying tickets. The secretary who spends her grocery money at a shoe sale nearly every week before paying the household bills.

    Read More

  • What Is Minimalism In The Oppressive Gospel Of Minimalism?

    1404 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the New York Times article, The Oppressive Gospel of ‘Minimalism’, millennial Kyle Chayka expresses his disdain towards minimalism’s trend and increasing incorporation in everyday life, deeming it to be, “expensive and exclusively branded by and for the elite.” In other words, Chayka discerns minimalism to only appeal towards millennials who have the financial freedom to rely on instant purchases rather than stocking for emergencies. Nonetheless, his stance does not recognize that minimalism does not aim to throw away everything in possession, but rather concentrate value upon few items to gain clarity in its worth. Hence, minimalism techniques in marketing and product values do not aim to exclude those who can’t afford it, but instead aim for consumers to consider its value in a single product. Value does not stem from price alone, but rarity, material, artistic context, design, and underlying connotations factor into its worth. Therefore, these non-explicit components in minimalist items are not considered by critics such as Kyle Chayka, and are deemed unnecessarily high without any contemplation. Another criticism against minimalism’s use in marketing is that it doesn’t give enough information for audience’s to be on the same page with reality. The point of minimalism is that the lack of information gives audiences full control over their own interpretations, and administering it in advertisements strengthens consumers’ power. Rather than giving deliberate features of an item, a minimalist ad would highlight its strengths, but allow audiences to extract its importance, whether it be personal or objective. Additionally, minimalism is employed to extract a degree of materialism in product advertising, since readers have to extrapolate potential experiences from items rather than worry about the costs. According to sociologist Joel

    Read More

  • The Yuppies

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    This made it easy for advertisers to depict a way of life in advertisements that created the picture of what people needed to purchase to prove their place; which is still a tactic used today. In order to sell commodities E*TRADE has created an advertisement that reinforces the Yuppie values of the past while differing from the overt nature of 80’s advertisements. The E*TRADE advertisement is a prime example of the yuppie way of life. One was a unashamed desire to get ahead through mental work. Another trait that this ad shows is the Yuppie desire to marry an equal counterpart. The last factor is a fixation with physical fitness. With all of that said, this E*TRADE ad is far less overt with its reference of the yuppie desire to show their class through consumer goods.

    Read More

  • American Materialism

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    The advancing American market and excessive, yet deceptive advertisements, leads to the nation’s consumerism culture that challenges our well-being spiritually and economically. As stated in his essay, Henry David Thoreau underscores the corrosiveness of materialism and the continuous toil to the individual's humanity and spirit...

    Read More

  • Rise Of The Image Culture Analysis

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    Have you ever seen an advertisement for a product and could immediately relate to the subject or the product in that advertisement? Companies that sell products are always trying to find new and interesting ways to get buyers and get people’s attention. It has become a part of our society today to always have products being shown to them. As claimed in Elizabeth Thoman’s essay Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, “…advertising offered instructions on how to dress, how to behave, how to appear to others in order to gain approval and avoid rejection”. This statement is true because most of the time buyers are persuaded by ads for certain products.

    Read More

  • Enron Unethical Case Study

    1476 Words  | 3 Pages

    This did not last long because just a quickly as they rose so did they fall. Within a year their stocks were down to little of nothing, and their name was not one someone wanted to be associated with. The downward spiral can be contributed to the organization culture and improper checks and balances.

    Read More

  • Consumption, Inequality, and Discontent in Consumer Society

    394 Words  | 1 Pages

    The looters were thought to feel disconnected from consumer society and it was believed that the feeling of being excluded from such society and the rise of inequality were the source of the riots. (Bauman, 2012) Campbell (1987) asserted that consumer society relies on the feeling of being excluded, as disappointment, which rarely matches with satisfaction, is what fuels consuming. Consumer society is therefore contradictory, it offers freedom in consumption to adopt identity and express status through consumer objects, whilst not everyone is granted this freedom of access to consumption. Regardless, this contradiction just further emphasises the role of consumption in a consumer society: consuming as a mean of status and wealth achievement,

    Read More

  • The New Consumerism Summary

    662 Words  | 2 Pages

    Americans today are consumer-driven and rely on materials to fulfill them. Unfortunately, this has permeated through our whole society, but why is that? Because the American market has been controlled by unnecessary consumption for decades and this is not incidental. As Americans we are surrounded by an atmosphere of advertisement that constantly portrays to us the benefits of buying good things and the drawbacks of being the only one without a phone or a computer. They do this in order to replace a want with a need. If a consumer believes something is necessary to a happy life then they will go out of their way to purchase it even if they do not have the ability to pay for it. This “need” complex not only arises from the media or newspapers, but from our neighbors and friends. This social competition for luxury goods has been noticed since the 1950’s and has been created from another need to satisfy. Consequently, Americans have placed many of their identities and lives in materials because they believe that these unnecessary goods will satisfy something that only God can fulfill.

    Read More

  • Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    In reality, consumers are only purchasing items to give themselves short term happiness but in the long term, purchasing items proves to make us feel empty and unfulfilled. As Americans, we should be pursuing minimalism or in other words, we should only be buying items that are necessary to our survival. This is one of many main reasons why Tyler Durden forms Fight Club and Project Mayhem, which is because he believes that this consumer-based culture is destructive to our society. In a way, consumerism is an endless cycle of propaganda proposed by companies advertising their products to consumers causing them to believe that they need or want these items but in reality they don’t. Thus, consumers are “trapped” in this concept and will work jobs that they hate but pay well just to support their lifestyle in this harmful culture. In a sense, materialism has become the center of our identity because our society defines an individual by what items he/she has. Likewise, materialism is taken to the extremes when our human body parts are seen as tools to make money. Palahniuk writes, “The truth. We made soap out of

    Read More

  • Relationship Between Consumption and Identity

    1583 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many people become victims of consumerism, often aspiring to unrealistic heights or being unable to sustain the financial implications of passive consumerism. The difference between essential consumerism and euphoric consumerism is a very fine line that can be easily crossed over if control is not maintained.

    Read More

  • Advertising: Information or Manipulation?

    1821 Words  | 4 Pages

    In today’s difficult economy who can afford to spend their hard-earned money carelessly? Americans want good quality and low prices, and businesses that advertise their product make saving money possible. Advertising was created for one reason, so businesses could make known their product (Black, Hashimzade, and Myles). Some consumers may argue that advertising is not informative, but that it is manipulative because some advertisements make false claims. Fortunately, there are regulations and consumer rights that promote truth in advertising. Consumers must embrace their rights to keep advertising the way it is meant to be. Advertising is meant to be informative and not manipulative, and consumers play a great role in promoting truth in advertising.

    Read More

  • Case Study Of Mustela

    1246 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nevertheless, one of the most important constants among all of us, regardless of our differences, is that, above all, we are buyers. We use or consume on a regular basis food, clothing, shelter, transportation, education, equipment, vacations, necessities, luxuries, services, and even ideas. As consumers, we play an essential role in the health of the economy; local, national and international. The purchase decision we make affect the requirement for basic raw materials, for transportation, for production, for banking; they affect the employment of employees and the growth of resources, the successfulness of some industries and the failure of others. In order to be successful in any business and specifically in today’s dynamic and rapidly evolving marketplace, marketers need to know everything they can about consumers; what they are want, what they are think, how they are work, how they are spend their leisure time. They have to find out the personal and group influences that affect consumer decisions and how these decisions are made. In these days of ever-widening media choices, they need to not only identify their target audiences, but they have to know where and how to reach

    Read More

More about Customer's Materialism And Consumerism

Open Document