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AMERICAN CONSUMERISM

The New Consumerist Chic

In 1981 President Ronald Reagan set the tone for an upsurge in American consumerism by celebrating his inauguration with $11 million worth of pageantry and balls, signaling to the nation that glitter was back in style. First Lady Nancy Reagan was soon overseeing expensive renovations at the White House and ordering a new set of White House china that cost more than $200,000. Although none of these expensive undertakings was financed with public funds, the Reagans were criticized for displaying an ostentatious extravagance that seemed inappropriate during the economic recession than plagued the early 1980s. Yet the "small is beautiful" philosophy that had charmed some in the 1970s was put aside for good. "America is back," the president declared, and the subtext of that declaration seemed to be "shop till you drop."

Consumer Culture as New Wave

All across the United States there was a huge assortment of goods and services to buy; and, as the president reminded Americans, the only limits they had were those they imposed on themselves. "We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl," Madonna sang; "Greed is good," declared the character Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street (1987). Supply-side economists, such as George Gilder in his Wealth and Poverty (1981), promoted the idea that free markets were the antidote to American economic problems, that if American businessmen were allowed to pursue their own self-interests, the profits they made would "trickle down" to all Americans in the form of raises and jobs, creating prosperity for all. It was a message that many Americans seemed ready to hear. Even the baby boomers who had been so idealistically anti-capitalist in the 1960s rapidly began to sign on to the nouveau chic of unabashed materialism. "Money is the long hair of the eighties," said actress Elizabeth Ashley. Everything necessary for the good life appeared to be for sale. The boomers, their parents, and their children had thousands of malls, supermarkets, and restaurants to visit. With inflation and interest rates falling, why not spend money? One timely wall poster, which showed a well-heeled young man standing smugly in front of a polished Bentley, was captioned "Poverty sucks."

The "Greening" of America

Money magazine and a host of other glossy periodicals for the money-minded filled the newstands. Financial planning became a craze. The popular media celebrated the big moneymakers, instantly conferring celebrity on Steven Jobs, the yuppie multimillionaire entrepreneur who founded Apple Computer; on super real-estate dealmaker Donald Trump; and on Wall Street financiers Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky, who made more in a few hours than most people made in a lifetime—and eventually ended up in jail for illegal insider trading. The mid 1980s became a time of multi-billion-dollar mergers and leveraged buyouts of multinational corporations. Former chief executive officers routinely bailed out in multimillion-dollar "golden parachutes." Teen stars, such as Molly Ringwald, made __BODY__ million a movie and became teen producers. Vincent van Gogh's Irises sold for $53.9 million. Dynasty and Dallas, prime-time television shows about millionaires, were hugely popular. Later in the evening millions watched Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, a series that took viewers into the sumptuous living rooms of the kings and queens of American enterprise. Millionaire Malcolm Forbes declared, "He who dies with the most toys wins."

The Changing Market

Marketers intensively studied the baby-boom generation—which by its sheer size (roughly 70 million) decisively imprinted each decade it passed through—trying to understand what its needs and buying habits would be. "What The Baby-Boomers Will Buy Next," a 1984 article in Fortune, noted,

With the oldest boomers now approaching 40 and the youngest just leaving college, the generation is entering its prime years of earning—and spending.…The boomers are a mouthwatering market…because they're maturing into the most affluent generation the U.S. has ever seen. Not only will they be rich, but the boomers will also spend a greater proportion of their wealth than any previous generation. It all adds up to the hugest consumer market ever.

The article also observed that in 1983 households headed by people aged twenty-five to thirty-four (the center of the baby boom) had a median income of $21,746, already higher than the national median for all age roups; it projected that by 1995 that same group would be making more than $50,000 (in constant 1982 dollars). Business and Madison Avenue took note. Clearasil antiacne medication followed the boomers as they aged. With its research showing that a growing number of adults had skin problems, the company introduced Clearasil Adult Care. In late 1985 Business Week ran an article titled "Consumers Are Spending The Economy To Health," and an article in Ad Age was headed "Young Adults Power Economic Engine." Yuppies became a favored market, their upscale trendiness sometimes referred to as "Cuisinart culture," after the popular and high-priced food processor found in more and more "well-furnished" kitchens, as yuppies happily embraced the notion that the latest high-tech creature-comfort gadgets were defining signs of their rising status.

The New Great American Pastime

During the 1980s various observers began to assert that shopping had become Americans' favorite leisure-time activity. In a five-year period at middecade the 91 million U.S. households purchased 62 million microwave ovens, 63 million VCRs, 57 million washers and dryers, 88 million cars and light trucks, 105 million color television sets, 31 million cordless phones, and 30 million telephone answering machines. Americans engaged in the greatest spending spree since the boom that followed World War II, causing journalist Tom Wolfe to refer to Americans in the 1980s as "the splurge generation." Surveys showed that Americans were spending more time in malls than anywhere else except home, job, or school; they made 7 billion trips in and out of shopping centers every year. By middecade there were more than twenty-six thousand shopping centers, and they accounted for 45 percent of retail sales, with annual purchases reaching __BODY__ trillion. In his The Mailing of America (1985) William Severini Kowinski called the American mall "the cathedral of the postwar culture, the Garden of Eden in a box." Indeed, in the 1980s shopping malls, which had been primarily suburban in the 1970s, not only continued to grow in number but expanded their reach both to small towns and, contrary to most predictions, even into the cities, hoping to capitalize on the yuppies living and working in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Saint Louis, and Philadelphia. Surveys reported that most Americans could easily travel from their residences to at least two shopping malls. In the 1980s mall planners and managers began to reconceive their consumer paradises, adding more restaurants, cafeterias, movie theaters, arcades, concerts, and special events. Kowinski describes the malls as a symbol of security, "a controlled environment that eliminates any suggestion of unpleasant realities, any reminders of war, terrorism, random murder, senseless death, toxicity in the biosphere, or of stupidity, mendacity, and psychosis in places high and low.…" "Especially since the advent of the nuclear-tipped inter-continental missile," he adds, "Americans have lived in sublimated terror of the 'bolt from the blue,' the instant and unwarned rain of annihilation. When we feel helpless, we hide. An entire society may have tried to find shelter, first in suburbia and then in the psychological bomb shelter of the shopping mall."

The Mall in the Home

During the 1980s the shopping mall was challenged by an unexpected competitor. More and more shopping could be done without leaving one's home or apartment—in fact, without leaving one's chair. Businesses both large and small moved into the American home, a new, not always invited, guest. Telemarketing reached millions of potential buyers by telephone. Continuing a trend that began in the late 1960s, more and more new mail-order outlets—as well as department stores, art museums, and various nonprofit charitable groups—began competing with old-time mail-order companies such as Sears, Montgomery Ward, and L. L. Bean. Another complement to home shopping was the home computer, which provided links to hundreds of markets through videotex systems such as CompuServe or, later, the IBM/Sears service, Prodigy. Through such on-line services customers could bank and shop. Finally, there was the new phenomenon of television channels such as the Home Shopping Network, and QVC Network. According to Fortune magazine, the home-shopping industry grew from sales of __BODY__ million in 1982 to sales of __BODY__.4 billion by 1989. Home shopping was facilitated especially by credit cards, the "plastic money" that was responsible for an explosion in consumer debt during the decade. By the mid 1980s the average credit card holder carried seven cards; the number of Mastercard and Visa charge cards held by American consumers was estimated to be 125 million.

Defining Upscale Markets

In the 1980s, trying to define the markets and attract the biggest chunks of discretionary spending or disposable income, marketers chased other demographic groups in addition to the baby boomers. Realizing that senior Americans were relatively better off than previous generations of the elderly, marketers began exploring the newly identified "Gray Market." Reaganomics was slowly but surely redistributing income, and marketers knew where the income was going. Television and magazine advertisements catered to upscale markets, creating lustrous images to appeal to the resurgent materialism of the 1980s consumer: fine luxury cars, futuristic multifunctional computers with color graphics, designer jeans and underwear, even an "upscale" mustard, Grey Poupon. In ad after ad people clustered in fashionable bars or restaurants, stepped out of Rolls Royces or BMWs, or swept effortlessly across marble parquet floors past gorgeous furnishings, enjoying the 1980s fantasy of the good life. Other ads featured yuppie business executives wrestling with problems of competitiveness in sleek corporate environments.

Signs for Beginning Marketers

Meanwhile, sales and research gurus told enterprising sellers how not to mistake their targets. In Why They Buy: American Consumers Inside and Out (1986) Robert B. Settle and Pamela L. Alreck pointed out, "Social class distinctions are vital to consumer goods marketers. Social classes differ not only in their power, prestige, and wealth, but also in their values, attitudes, lifestyles, and behaviour patterns." The authors measured such things as the average amount of money spent on decorating living rooms, and spoke unabashedly of identifying clientele by "The Great Absolutely Infallible Living Room Test." "Upscale social strivers," they observe, "have homes with white walls and textured fabric drapes in plain, solid colors. Prints, paintings, tapestry, or hanging sculpture may decorate the walls." By contrast, "downscale homemakers paint walls in various colors or use wallpaper. Print curtains and patterned drapes are popular.…Religious pictures and icons, figurines and knick-knacks, family photographs, and handcraft items decorate the rooms." In another section of their book the authors list as "upscale products and brands" Stouffer, Lean Cuisine, Le Menu, Dannon yogurt, and Haagen-Dazs ice cream; "downscale products and brands" include Banquet, Swanson frozen TV dinners, Hamburger Helper, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese casseroles, and Jell-O Pudding. In another book designed to help marketers capture customers, demographers study "purchase behavior by cluster" to discover chief indicators of highest-income households (8 percent of U.S. house-holds in 1988). Consumers in this group tend to travel frequently and prefer tennis and golf as leisure activities. Indicators of those at the lowest income level (about 6 percent of U.S. households) include heavy consumption of liquor and cigarettes and frequent purchase of insecticides.

Criticisms of the Culture of Consumption

Many people, it appeared, were having a good time spending money in the mid 1980s. Even after the stock-market crash of 1987, a popular song lyric advised, "Don't worry, be happy!" Yet cautionary and critical voices were heard throughout the decade. Sociologists, cultural critics, social historians, and theologians argued about the meaning of the triumphant commercialism in contemporary society. Some progressives argued that the phenomenon of rampant consumerism could be explained as a mass reaction to and compensation for the political powerlessness many individuals felt, either consciously or subconsciously. In The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life (1983) Paul L. Wachtel argued,

Our restless desire for more and more has been a major dynamic for economic growth, but it has made the achievement of that growth largely a hollow victory. in America, we keep upping the ante.…It is not what we have that determines whether we think we are doing well; it is whether we have more—more than our parents, more than we had ten years ago. Our entire economic system is based on human desire's being inexhaustible, on there being a potential market for almost anything we can produce. Without always recognizing what we are doing, we have established a pattern in which we continually create discontent.

For some worried economists national economic policy throughout the decade both encouraged and exemplified irresponsible overconsumption. In his Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy under Reagan and After (1988) Benjamin Friedman…criticized Reaganomics as a collective national folly of over-consumption. Decrying the fiscal policies that transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation in 1980 to the largest debtor in the world by 1986, Friedman claimed that the U.S. government had shifted from a tax-and-spend policy to a spend-and-borrow policy, Commenting on the perception of good times that many Americans shared in middecade, he wrote, "But it is clear that this sense of economic well-being was an illusion, an illusion based on borrowed time and borrowed money. Jobs are plentiful and profits are high because we are spending amply, but more than ever what we are spending for is consumption.…We are living well by running up our debt and selling off our assets. America has thrown itself a party and billed the tab to the future." The costs, he predicted, would include "a lower standard of living for individual Americans and reduced American influence and importance in world affairs." The consumerism of the 1980s also became a subject of satire. One cartoon featured a yuppie couple standing in a.gourmet delicatessen, gazing at a floor-to-ceiling array of cheeses, breads, croissants, wines, and mineral waters as the husband asked his wife, "See anything?"