How advertising and consumer culture are contributing to the creation of a homogeneous global culture

To begin with, Western democratic culture is often circumscribed by the term “consumer culture”, meaning that many cultural processes, logic and thinking are subsumed under the primary ethic of selling. The world of goods and their principles of structuration are central to the understanding of contemporary society,
because goods are symbolized and used as communicators because of the importance of the market principles of supply, demand, capital accumulation, competition and monopolization (Featherstone 1991: p. 84)
Featherstone stresses, that we are not consuming use-values, but signs (ibid.: 85).

During the evolution of consumer culture, consumption became the dominant mode of cultural reproduction (Slater 1997: p.8). Slater highlights the power of market principles, stating that consumer culture denotes a social arrangement in which the relation between lived culture and social resources (…) is mediated through markets (ibid.), and a colonization of everyday life by consumption norms which rendered it status-driven and conformist (ibid.: 12). People became promotional signifiers (Wernick 1991). Moreover, the idea of satisfaction became dependent upon possession and consumption of the socially sanctioned and legitimate – and therefore scarce or restricted – social goods (Featherstone 1991: p. 89). It is hard to say when consumer culture evolved, but scientists agree upon the idea it is linked to Fordist mass consumption (Slater 1997: p. 10)1. Consumer culture also draws from the very idea of modernity: the desire to possess the latest goods is deeply rooted in our societies. During the 20th century, international trade increased in a way never seen before, and Western-style consumer culture spread worldwide (Sandikci et al 2002: p. 463). Especially the recent years of the 20th century showed an increase in multinational corporations and a growth in power of transnational companies. Multinational companies are not a phenomenon that arose after the 1980s, but the combination of de-regulated capital markets, less unionized labour markets and extended trading areas contributed to the actual state (Myers 1999: p. 57).