Questions: Consumer Society: Mass Production, Advertising, and Consumption

Question 1

What technical and economic innovations made the emergence of consumer society possible in the early 20th century?

Model answer: Mass production, pioneered by Henry Ford's assembly line (Model T production from 1908), dramatically reduced the cost of manufactured goods by substituting machinery and division of labor for skilled craftsmanship. The Model T fell in price from $850 in 1908 to $260 in 1925 as production scaled. Rising real wages (Ford paid $5/day -- roughly double the market wage -- to reduce turnover and enable his workers to buy his cars) meant workers had purchasing power beyond subsistence. Installment credit ('buy now, pay later') enabled purchases of durable goods beyond immediate income. Department stores created concentrated retail environments designed for browsing and impulse purchase. Advertising shifted from informing about products to creating aspirational desire -- the advertising industry grew tenfold in the 1920s.

The interplay of production, credit, wages, and advertising was essential to consumer society's emergence. None of these individually was sufficient -- all had to develop together. The 1920s US consumer economy was the model that spread, with variations, to other wealthy countries after WWII.

Question 2

The planned obsolescence strategy was introduced by General Motors in the 1920s. What was it and what were its economic consequences?

• A. GM planned to obsolete Ford's Model T by producing a better car, which was a standard competitive strategy with no unusual implications
• B. GM's Alfred Sloan introduced annual model changes and a range of cars at different price points, creating psychological obsolescence -- the sense that last year's car was outdated -- to drive repeat purchases beyond functional need
• C. GM planned to make cars wear out faster through inferior materials, ensuring customers would need replacements within 3-5 years
• D. Planned obsolescence was introduced by the electronics industry in the 1960s; the automotive industry adopted it later

Answer: (B)

Alfred Sloan's strategic insight: Ford's Model T was durable and functionally adequate, so customers bought one and kept it. GM introduced annual styling changes ('the annual model') and a car ladder (Chevrolet to Pontiac to Oldsmobile to Buick to Cadillac) that made last year's model seem outdated. This was psychological rather than functional obsolescence -- the 1929 Chevrolet didn't stop working, but the 1930 model looked different and made the old one seem behind the times. This created continuous demand for new products even when old ones still functioned. Advertising amplified it: owning new things signaled status and modernity.

Question 3

How did advertising's purpose and methods change between the 19th and 20th centuries?

Model answer: 19th-century advertising was primarily informational: it announced the existence and price of goods and described their features. Early newspaper ads for patent medicines and goods were text-heavy descriptions. The early 20th century saw advertising's transformation into desire creation: rather than informing, ads associated products with status, sex, freedom, and happiness. Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) applied psychoanalytic ideas to advertising, designing campaigns that connected products to unconscious desires. The 'Torches of Freedom' campaign (1929) associated women smoking with suffragist liberation, linking cigarettes to independence. Advertising became an industry of psychologists, designers, and copywriters whose explicit goal was creating emotional associations that bypassed rational evaluation. By the 1950s, TV advertising could reach millions simultaneously with carefully crafted emotional messaging.

Bernays's role in transforming advertising is documented in his own writing (Propaganda, 1928) and in Adam Curtis's documentary 'The Century of the Self.' The shift from information to desire creation is fundamental to understanding consumer culture's hold on 20th century life.

Question 4

Consumer society in the 20th century raised living standards for most people in wealthy countries and therefore has no significant costs.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Consumer society raised material living standards substantially and provided genuine benefits: access to goods (appliances, healthcare products, communications) that improved life quality. But it also generated documented costs. Environmental: continuous production growth depleted resources and generated waste and pollution. Social: advertising-driven consumption financed through debt created financial fragility (the 2008 crisis had roots in consumer debt); consumption became a substitute for other sources of meaning and community. Inequality: consumer goods access depends on income; advertising relentlessly promotes consumption as the route to happiness, which correlates with credit card debt and financial stress among lower-income consumers. Labor: global supply chains that produce cheap consumer goods often depend on poor labor conditions in producing countries.

Question 5

What is the 'treadmill of production' argument, and how does it connect consumer society to environmental degradation?

Model answer: The treadmill of production (Allan Schnaiberg, 1980) argues that capitalist economies have a structural tendency toward continuous growth: firms must grow to survive competition; workers need wages from growth; governments need tax revenue from growth. This treadmill generates continuous extraction of natural resources and disposal of waste products. Consumer society is the demand side of the treadmill: advertising creates desires for new products, planned obsolescence ensures existing products become obsolete, credit enables purchases beyond current income -- all driving continuous consumption growth. Environmental degradation is not accidental but structural: the same economic logic that generates growth also generates resource depletion, pollution, and waste. Addressing environmental problems thus requires addressing the growth imperative, not just technical fixes.

Schnaiberg's treadmill of production concept has been influential in environmental sociology. It frames environmental problems as systemic rather than the result of individual choices or bad actors -- a structural analysis that points toward different policy solutions than individual behavioral change.