People today live in a society which is oriented to sales and promotion of products. There are new products being places on the market and advertised every day and it has made an impact on the behavior of people. Marketing and advertising are responsible for creating human needs. Therefore, modern culture does encourage consumption too much because people buy things they do not need and which do not serve them in everyday life.
People work hard to earn money and their salaries are not very big, especially if they are average. However, they are lured by specialists into buying things which are supposed to make them happy and fill the emotional void in their lives. However, this is not a permanent solution and people continue to shop in order to make themselves feel better, which never ends because shopping is not the solution. ”Steve McKevitt argues in this selection that much of it can be credited to massive marketing campaigns designed to convince us that if we only buy this product or that service, we will be happy. (McKevitt 144). He is right in stating this reason for the encouragement of consumerism because people resort to shopping in order to make themselves feel better. There are not so many things or services that people need, but they still continue to shop for them. The reason for that lies in the fact that they hope to feel better if they acquire a certain product. There is a difference between wants and needs and people’s wants have surpassed the needs which is the result of advertising techniques and modern society which used media to help them create psychological needs which are artificial. “A need is something we have to have – like food, sleep or water. A want is something we would like to have” (McKevitt 145). Skillful experts shape people’s minds and make them want to possess things which they offer. These things can be lived without although they sometimes do make lives easier and are more functional than previous models. However, the bottom line is that people have artificial needs and that they own too many things which are not necessary. Products which people want change from time to time and they are transient. There are times when something is popular which is later replaced with something else. “This transience creates an opportunity for anyone who is trying to sell us something – whether that’s a product, a service or even an idea – and they can invent wants for us as well as the means to assuage them” (McKevitt 145).
When attracting people to buy products, marketers use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which is designed to explain how people’s needs are satisfied and in which way. When basic needs for food and shelter are fulfilled, then people’s needs become finer and are raised to a more spiritual level. “It is because we don’t really need anything anymore that the focus of innovation has itself turned to addressing our wants instead. As Maslow demonstrates, once needs are taken care of, wants can be just as powerful drivers” (McKevitt 147). Moreover, people are not always aware what their needs are and what their wants are. Needs are satisfied on a rational level, while wants are irrational and people buy things they do not need t satisfy themselves on a psychological level. According to the hierarchy of needs, this is logical because people tend to feel good about themselves if they make a purchase and spend money on a service or an object that makes them feel desirable even if it is for a brief moment. McKevitt argues that “decisions about wants are driven entirely by our emotions and these feelings can be so strong that they cause us to overrule or simply ignore rational objects” (McKevitt 147). This is the point where people think only about their personal fulfillment regardless of the consequences.
There are varieties of the product which is essentially the same and has the same effect. McKevitt gives the example of more than a hundred brands of toothpaste. He suggests that “despite this welter of options, each and every one of them will be virtually identical chemically; essentially the same thing, packaged and positioned in dozens of slightly different ways” (McKevitt 148). These so-called innovations are not necessary, but they are carefully advertised and they raise public awareness in order to become trendy. The products which are offered make people unsatisfied with what they already have which causes them to want more. This is all an illusion and it is created by the experts in marketing in order for the companies to sell the products. There might even be cheaper version of the product available, but people will want the one which is being advertised because everything looks better in an advertisement. However, this kind of behavior will end at a certain point especially because of the climate changes as “we are not going to be able to rely on fossil fuels forever” (Mckevitt 148). Nature will prevent people from spending too much and everything will be restored to a natural order of things.
It is true that modern culture encourages consumption too much because people are buying things they do not need all the time for the sake of prestige and for satisfying their urge to compete with other people. Consumerism affects people’s lives globally and their wants are based on their emotions. They do not think too much about fulfilling their desires because they are affected on the emotional level. This is something that people cannot resist and which is an integral part of their lives.
Works Cited
McKevitt, Steve. Everything Now. Pontefract: Route, 2013. Print.
