A Minimalist’s Top Seven Strategies for Avoiding Consumerism

For example, consumerism can affect our worldviews and confuse us – especially when we start feeling that our lives are not providing us with what we need to be happy. From the Western perspective, we might have all the elements that constitute a good quality of life – job, car, house and other material possessions.

List of the Pros of Consumerism

• Consumerism stimulates economic growth.
• It also boosts creativity and innovation.
• Cost reductions are encouraged because of consumerism.
• It weeds out the poor performers naturally.
• Consumerism encourages freelancing, entrepreneurialism, and self-employment.

1. Limit exposure to commercials by limiting TV viewing.
2. Limit temptations by avoiding superfluous shopping.
3. Shop for birthday and special occasion gifts year-round.
4. Resist the urge to spend gift cards right away.
5. Monitor your email subscriptions and guard your inbox.
6. Choose carefully how you spend your time.

Fundamentally, consumerism is a socioeconomic model built upon the engineering of desire. While consumerism’s original purpose may have been to drive economic growth by manipulating people into spending more, it quickly evolved into a tool for social control.

Consumerism becomes excessive when it extends beyond what is needed. When we begin consuming more than is needed, boundaries are removed. Personal credit allows us to make purchases beyond our income-level. Advertisements subtly reshape our desires around material possessions.

The addiction to acquisition has become an everyday thing in American’s lives. We live in a consumer society where materialism is dominant. Goods and services are obtained not only to fulfill human’s basic needs, but also to have a special identification in the American society.

The definition of consumerism is the protection of the rights and interests of the general pool of buyers, or an obsession with buying material goods or items. Laws and rules that protect people who shop and spend are examples of consumerism. An obsession with shopping and acquiring stuff is an example of consumerism.

Market led globalization intensifies commodity exchange thereby capturing global markets promoting consumerism through lucrative promises such as fair and efficient use of resources to meet basic human needs, increased access to more goods (Evenett, 1999), reduced prices due to competition with local monopolies and …

Consumerism is a concept that is shaped by social and economic conditions. Consumerism by itself is a part of the general process of social control and cultural hegemony in modern society. Opponents in modern consumerist culture eroding the human’s spiritual connection with nature, while Proponents preserving it.

Consumerism is the idea that increasing the consumption of goods and services purchased in the market is always a desirable goal and that a person’s wellbeing and happiness depend fundamentally on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions.

In summary, capitalism is a system of wealth generation and distribution. Consumerism is the social order that motivates the act of purchasing goods or services. According to these definitions, capitalism and consumerism are inextricably intertwined.

Interpretations are based on consumerism instead of religion, where some seek spiritual gratification through consumption, etc. Some have even termed consumerism as “the religion of the masses.” Many religions tend to favor higher spiritual pursuits and put down materialistic pursuits and desires.

Consumerism is defined as a social and economic order and ideology that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. The way this behavior spreads and elevates its status in society is surprisingly similar with religious traditions.

Consumerism is a spirituality; not a crass form of materialism. It is concerned with the immaterial self and its possibilities for being, and only with material goods insofar as they are the media of exploring possibilities for the self.

Consumerism Essay: The word consumerism means the economic order by which the public demands the acquisition and consumption of goods and services in a social setup. Consumerism is their combined efforts of the consumers seeking redressal and remedy for their dissatisfaction with the product.

Consumer behavior impacts quality of life by letting the consumers purchase or acquire whatever product or service they want and therefore having a quality of life. Every time a person wants to buy something he or she knows they have a quality of life due to the expenses of their product.

One of the most iconic examples of consumer culture is Apple’s rise to the top to technology, because it created a product that fit the needs of consumers in a way that buyers became part of a technology movement.

Basic characteristics of consumer culture can be summarized in the transforming of needs to desires, utilitarian/hedonic needs-values, commodity fetishism, conspicuous leisure and consumption, cultural values, aestheticization, alienation, differentiation and speed.

According to sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, a consumerist culture values transience and mobility rather than duration and stability, and the newness of things and reinvention of oneself over endurance.