The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life (History of Communication) [Paperback]

Michael Dawson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2004

The Consumer Trap blows the lid off the trillion-dollar-a-year big business marketing industry, explaining how it soaks up economic and environmental resources while dominating our personal lives. Flouting conventional mainstream and radical thinking about consumer culture, Michael Dawson provides a step-by-step account of how big business marketing campaigns penetrate and alter the lives of ordinary Americans. Michael Dawson is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Portland State University. A volume in the series The History of Communication, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Michael Dawson's meticulous and illuminating research into marketing theory and practice lays bare some of the most important developments of the 20th century: the ways in which the sophisticated and self-conscious 'class coercion' designed by and for business leaders passed beyond meticulous management of the workplace to 'manipulating people's off-the-job perceptions and actions.' Dawson exposes the mythology of 'consumer sovereignty' and 'free markets,' and sketches a humane alternative to domination by 'corporate overlords' and the state power to which they are closely linked." Noam Chomsky "This well-documented study is fascinating reading. Highly recommended." Choice "Big Brother is alive and well and working for Madison Avenue. Michael Dawson tells us what the media won't, how Big Business brainwashes citizens into consumers and undermines democracy. Everyone who fears the Thought Police should read this brilliant expose." John Stauber, coauthor, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry "This groundbreaking book is indispensable to anyone who wants to understand the history and nature of the marketing colossus that bestrides our narrow world. Picking up where Thorstein Veblen left off, Michael Dawson offers up a powerful analysis of corporate sales as a continuation of class warfare. With heroic clarity and force--and on the basis of a great deal of remarkable research--he tells us how and why it is that marketing serves not our pleasure or our happiness, but only the demands of business." Mark Crispin Miller, author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV and The Bush Dyslexicon

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (December 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252072642
• ISBN-13: 978-0252072642
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #522,741 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Critique, May 27, 2003

By 

Harold Arthur Wilson (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Consumer Trap: BIG BUSINESS MARKETING IN AMERICAN LIFE (History of Communication) (Hardcover)

This is no mere academic exercise despite its having been published by a university press. "The Consumer Trap" does for understanding contemporary commercial culture what Manufacturing Consent did for modern media studies. It is one of the most important and persuasive books I have ever read, and I compare it to the best of C. Wright Mills - which it resembles. Not since Veblen has a literate analyst taken on what capitalism has been doing to American life, gloves off, like Michael Dawson does. The statistics he cites about the staggering amounts being spent by business to keep the madness of our time-deprived and consumption-obsessed way of life going are worth the price of the book. Fans (like me) of Jacoby's "The Last Intellectuals" will keenly note that Dawson, albeit a Ph.D. in sociology, is making his living as a paralegal - and hence is free from the toady disciplinary and departmental politics that would have aborted this brilliant book. Tell your friends - and get together to discuss this book while we still have a remaining few shreds of social fabric which have not been turned into rubbish.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Class struggle from above, December 3, 2005

By 

Malvin (Frederick, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life (History of Communication) (Paperback)

"The Consumer Trap" by Michael Dawson is a brilliant analysis of big business marketing and society. Drawing on the pioneering work of Thorstein Veblen, Mr. Dawson breaks new ground by unmasking the class basis of consumer culture. Positing that marketing functions as a coercive force that is wielded by the wealthy for the purpose of exploiting the working class, the author helps us deconstruct the logic of capital and imagine how a truly healthy and democratic society might come to pass.

Mr. Dawson discusses how marketing has thrived as a result of class stratification, where the inequal distribution of profits forces capitalists into fierce competition for relatively scarce consumer dollars. Importantly, Mr. Dawson demonstrates how marketers utilize sophisticated techniques to manipulate the behaviors of target audiences in order to attain corporate profit objectives. This insight helps Mr. Dawson debunk the ideological notion that marketing functions merely to align the forces of supply and demand in a competitive, free market economy; rather, the author explains that products such as automobiles, cigarettes and junk foods demonstrate that the well-being of consumers and the environment are less important than the prerogative of producing predictable and reliable returns to shareholders.

Mr. Dawson further contends that marketing exerts a "Piranha effect" where thousands of subtle psychological commands combine to exert significant changes in human behavior; that these advertising messages convince humans to engage in self-destructive behaviors is but one manifestation of the phenomenon. Mr. Dawson vividly describes how corporate-controlled processes have succeeded in subsuming the masses to a highly commodified and consumerist lifestyle. As this culture spreads through globalization, the author contends that the working class experiences an increasingly dangerous, deskilled and degraded existence while a relatively small number of investors reap huge financial rewards on a consistent basis.

Interestingly, Mr. Dawson theorizes about how those wishing to develop a Democratic/Socialist alternative to today's market totalitarianism might do well to coopt the tools of the capitalist overclass. Imagining that a political movement might coalesce around the public's growing resentment of the social and financial costs imposed by the consumer trap, Mr. Dawson believes that it might be possible for the public to utilize market research techniques to more efficiently allocate resources towards the production of socially-beneficial products and services. While acknowledging that the realities of corporate power makes it very difficult to nurture such a movement, the author believes that a Democratic/Socialist society could help inaugurate an era of peace, egalitarianism and environmental sustainability for all.

I highly recommend this exceptionally well-researched, imaginative and original work to everyone.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Essential - A privilege to Read, June 4, 2009

By 

GlobalChangeSupercenter5 "Globalchangesuperce... (Salem, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life (History of Communication) (Paperback)

This is a lost classic - a brilliantly formatted, tough-minded exploration of the corporate capitalist supersystem. Dawson illuminates its doings with style, commendable organization, and admirable clarity. His is not the end word on any of these momentous events of our time, and he may have left this kind of accessible acadamic scholarship behind, but you will be grateful for having found this gem. I continue to enjoy my CDs and not the wobbly LPs I gew up smashing, but I'll never look at our product usage society in the same way.