Materialism in Consumer Behavior and Marketing

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club. English dictionary defines materialism as a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values .We can’t deny that materialism comes from different factors of the external environment but promotion and advertisement play a large role in making people wanting more and more each day of things they truly don’t need as a way of feeling evaluated.

Promotions are used as way to make consumers learn and about a certain product and increasing the desire to have the product. They are an essential part of a business’s success but in today’s society their impact has increased a lot. The excess of advertisements that we see on a daily basis stimulates more desire for an array of products and since is everywhere we cannot avoid it no matter the measures taken.

Ways that companies and brands choose to advertise their product doesn’t just help them with the sales and making their product known, it goes beyond that and its effects people especially youngsters.

In the recent years we have seen the rise of the “Hypebeast” which put in simple words is a person who follows a trend to be cool or in style, a person who wears what is hyped up for the sole purpose of impressing others and that is materialism at its finest. Now there are certain brands such as Gucci,Supreme,Off-white which have caused this shift of youth towards being a hypebeast and it is all thanks to their promotion strategies.

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Let’s take a brand like Supreme as an example. It started off as a company that produced clothes for skaters and it became one of the most expensive brands when they paid celebrities like Justin Bieber and Kanye West to wear their clothes. Their marketing strategy not only included using famous people but also hyping their clothes up. The owner of Supreme once said in an interview “If I can sell 600, I will produce 400”. In this case we have high demand and low supply which is the mayor reason people want to buy such a brand, not everyone can have it. Most people buy their clothes only to sell them 4x the price when they are sold out and people still buy it. Teens are buying a $600 t-shirt with a logo in front of it just to make their friend think they are cool.

Promotion creates awareness and visibility for products, it may contribute to materialism in the same way that movies, sports, theater, art, and literature may contribute to materialism. If there were no promotion, it is likely that there would still be materialism among some groups but advertisement is still impacting the change in people needs in not only buying something they need but something only because someone else has it or just because it makes you feel evaluated.

When you see people on tv commercials, billboards or even Instagram ads looking so happy just by having a certain product you are naturally drawn to wanting that product. People are placing their happiness on products and that its materialism. Even as small children when we wanted a toy, we would start crying so our parents would buy that for us and having that toy would make us stop crying. In todays society most people feel like their life would be so much better like for example if they had that nice car, they saw on that new BMW ad because the guy driving it looked so successful and driving that car would make successful. They feel that they can be fulfilled if they can just get that new house. A few days later they will actually be satisfied this time if they can just get that new phone. Now this time it will for sure be fulfilling once I but that watch. 

The problem, it will never truly fulfill them. It is unsustainable and wears off, until they move on to the next thing that they need. It isn’t just a toxic ideal you wake up with one morning. It comes from when the children are young. They are taught at a young age that the key to happiness is to obtain physical items. Suzanna Opree has done extensive research on the effects of advertising on children, and her research revealed a strong correlation between the amount of time exposed to television and materialism. Opree studied the connection between the amount of television that children between the ages of 8 and 11 watched and from this, found the amount of this time that was spent watching advertisements. She then asked the children questions like “Do you feel unhappy if you can’t buy the things you actually want to have?” and “Do you think that other children would like you better if you had a lot of expensive things?” They found a heavy correlation between the answers to these questions and the expression of materialistic values by these children. Opree concluded at the end of the study that children that were exposed to more advertisements, had a greater desire for the things they saw being advertised and therefore were determined to be more materialistic than those children who were exposed to less.

To conclude promotion, advertising commercials and brands do have an impact on use some negative some positive but is sure is that I make us materialist, always wanting more. That is not healthy especially on children who are way more easily impressed. You can’t feel achieved only because of the things you own. Advertising cannot be avoided but at least companies should keep in mind the audience when they do it.