Monthly Archives: August 2011

Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance

Posted on August 8, 2011 by wenlin

Children become addicted to junk food today.  They are controlled by advertising and unhealthy products because they are not able to distinguish between good and bad. According the movie that we watched yesterday today children have developed many kind of diseases in their early age such as bi-polar, diabetes, ADHD, hypertension and more. These were unheard of in my childhood. The effects of the fast food on the children are permanently harmful. The excess sugar in the food leads to diabetes, while the saturated fat content throws the child in the clutches of obesity.

According to the New York time, food and beverage advertisers found a way to make their own guidelines and provide more junk food to children without worrying. These companies want to “self-regulate” and set up their own standards and therefore unhealthy food becomes “healthy” today.  For example, last week that McDonald’s invented its “Happy Meal” by adding a few apple slices and removing a few French fries.  The article mentions: “overpriced junk food sold not by its value but by its marketing scheme.”

The most evil offender is soft drinks, which account for a great amount of product placement appearances. Coca-Cola alone accounted for a very high percentage of product placement occurrences viewed by children. When children watch these advertisements, it increased their consumption of junk foods including soft drink.

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Reaction to A Consumer’s Republic

Posted on August 8, 2011 by mmarcus

http://www.gillettevenus.com/en_US/products/index.jsp
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5689771_women_s-vs_-men_s-razor.html

The first link that I’m referencing here is for Venus razors, which are marketed specifically toward women because they supposedly are made to moisturize your skin, exfoliate it, and perform other positive, “feminine” functions for the skin.

If you look at this, or any other advertisement for feminine hygiene products, it makes it seem as if using a man’s product is incorrect, and will actually hurt your skin or make you less beautiful. However, I had read an article a long time ago, which was on a similar subject to Lizabeth Cohen’s Consumer’s Republic. Basically, Cohen’s thesis is that all the differences between races and the two sexes are media inventions, and it immediately reminded me of how advertising pushes different razors on men and women, when there is practically no difference between them.

However, with razors, the advertising industry is actually being more scheming than usual. It turns out that, despite the fact that the razors are about the same quality, men’s razors are less expensive. The reason for this, I believe, is supply and demand. According to the second article that I linked, women’s razors wear out faster because women shave more of their body than men do. Therefore, razor manufacturers can charge more for the same product because women don’t want to go out looking like unshaven bears. Essentially, women should buy men’s razors if they want to be more economical.

Yet, although I feel that there are many women who wouldn’t care about buying a man’s razor, the opposite wouldn’t be true. Would a man buy only women’s razors if it turned out to be better for him? Psychologically, I imagine that doing things like this are not easy for men. Would they buy scented soap, even they like the smell? Maybe it’s a bit too feminine for them.

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children and consumption

Posted on August 8, 2011 by natalia.tatishvili

From the beginning of the 1900’s marketers realized the potential to sell their products and services to children.  The Children’s market became a very lucrative market for corporations in a very short period of time. The effect of this phenomenon is enormous. It has affected not only the children but changed society and with it changed the way family functions within.

From the moment the child is born, it is bombarded with commercials on a daily basis. Therefore, the child grows up consumed by it. As it is stated in the YouTube video, “we are creating super consumers”. Children grow up being consumed by brands and products that are reaching them anywhere and possible at any point of the day using multiple different channels. Big corporations spend a lot of time and resources in order to research and analyze children’s psychology. For example, children’s behavior that interactions with others, what they like to eat or what they want to wear and etc. This research helps them to target children and influence their consumption habits more precisely. Marketers that reach children from the infancy stage are trying to create brand loyalty for life and attach children emotionally to their brands.

In my opinion, this phenomenon is problematic for the children as well as society as a whole. US has no regulations for children’s commercials, therefore companies take advantage of the deregulation to their fullest extent. I believe parents should be involved in creating values and ideologies in their children’s lives and not corporations, by constantly pushing their brands on children. From my personal observations, the lack of time spent with the children and the guilt parents have due to time scarcity, influences the constants consumption of products and services that children demand from the parents. I believe by doing so and allowing children to have everything that they ask for, parents feel less guilty for not spending enough time with their children; therefore parents are as accountable as marketers in children’s consumerism. I believe, buying products and services doesn’t replace the lost time with the parents and children grow up feeling empty and lonely and the only way they know how to deal with it is, to consume more material things.

 

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Media & Advertising

Posted on August 8, 2011 by nadya.mingo

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/media/promoting-products-using-social-media-advertising.html?ref=media

According to the above article MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have become the world’s leading social media for not only networking with friends and family but a prime way to promote businesses and product lines. These social networks have developed ways that browsers can click on links to see companies’ ads on their Facebook or either Twitter without having to actually leave their page also viewing commercial links from YouTube posted on their walls etc. They refer to this as a “cold-based ad platform”. Social Network is absolutely one of the best ways to advertise companies due to the increasing use of these networks by billions of people worldwide on an everyday basis. It has said that users spend at least 30 second consuming time on ads. In addition to that companies are looking into making ads more accessible to consumers on these social networks.

 Kontera is a media and technology company that is taking a very similar concept with its marketing in today’s technology. They have actually developed a way that advertisers pay for keywords to be hyperlinked within its blog or article. So basically when consumers click on the words of their choice it often takes users to the advertiser’s website. Kontera also uses a system called “In text ads”. For example Verizon does not promote their business over social networks like Facebook or Twitter accounts instead they advertise using their sponsor Will Power, the race car driver who competes in the Indy Racing League.

It thus shows that we are in a new era of marketing with the new online social media that is increasingly becoming popular, companies are capitalizing on this audience in order to gain a better advantage of increasing their market share.

 

 

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Do Husbands and Wives have equal workloads?

Posted on August 8, 2011 by sarah.deikun

A New York Times article assessed whether men and women had an unequal distribution of work in the household. The original argument that women do more stemmed from the authors’ own experience and those of the women she knows. She went on to explain a little of why she believed what she did in the first place. Her investigating on the matter, led her to analyze the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In it, she appeared to be convinced by their data that women in fact do not do more work than men. I remain skeptical of this data. I have many questions left unanswered. For example, what was considered paid work or unpaid work? What was categorized as leisure rather than work? What questions were asked to determine these findings? I think that many women and mothers do things that may not be considered work or even essential to the functioning of the household but rather just to make things a little better for the family. I do agree that perhaps mothers spend more time thinking about the functioning of the family which would remain unaccounted for. Essentially, the argument of whether or not the workload between spouses is equal does not matter. If the arrangement of the household works for the individual family, then why keep tabs? However, credit is due to mothers who do live the role of housewife and take care of children and the household. It is arguably the most underpaid job out there and has the least vacation time (none!)!

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Young Consumers

Posted on August 8, 2011 by christina.torres

The reason for childhood obesity in America is due to the way in which junk food is being marketed, at least that is what the article from the New York Times states.  Corporations such as General Mills, McDonald’s Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Burger King are just few of the many companies that use multimedia games and puzzles on the internet and cellphone apps to advertise their unhealthy and sugary products to children.  Through these games kids are able to then e-mail whatever products or characters they created in the game to other friends, making children not just consumers to these products, but marketers as well.

Some of these companies had vouched to be ‘less aggressive’ with their advertising for children by only advertising the foods that are “better for you”, but this was just a something they said to make food critics a bit more comfortable.  The food in actuality was not good for you, becasue all the food companies like the ones mentioned previosly do not have healthy food to advertise anyways.

The artcile also mentions how “children have the power over spending in the household” and it’s true, not just from what we have seen in the youtube video clip in class, but I’m sure any of us who have been exposed to children whi whine, kick and scream, until they end up getting what they want.  Parents are not entirely to blame when they end up giving in to tantrums becasue what working parent wouldn’t give in time to time.

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19th century Household Technology

Posted on August 7, 2011 by iselva.alcantara

Searching through Google I found a video relating to household technology of the mid 19th century.  This mini documentary comes from the Library of Congress titled  “The History of Household Technology”. I, like most of you know that life for these women during this period wasn’t easy. Household work would take all day and it was arduous work.  I have never been so grateful for the advancements in household technology until now. The video portrays some innovations regarding laundry, ironing and the stove.  Today these chores have become so efficient regarding time, we often forget that each of these activities took a day each back in the 19th century.  In the documentary they mention some excerpts of reading materials provided to housewife by other housewives.  These were advices and tips on how to become a better housewife.

It is quite interesting on how these women first started doing laundry by hand and then decades later, trying to find easier, less strenuous ways to do these chores, technological innovations came up with a product that resembles a washing machine.

Even the clothes iron was something to dread, due to its weight and its capability to burn your hand or even worst explode.

This reminds me a great deal of how many of the authors of the readings we do for class, make the argument that all these technological innovations although great have did not take the women out of the kitchen.  I agree with them but at the same time it is hard to not grasp the importance of how much these innovations have diminish the laborious work endured by the women of the 19th century.  It is interesting to note that these women did think their work was difficult and at the same time the network of housewives around them served as motivation to continue working hard everyday.  I also was a little bit curious on how they manage to do the chores like cooking,cleaning and taking care of the children,all daily activities if each of these took a day.  I concluded that they had to have had help from their children and servants.

 

 

 

 

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Chore Wars

Posted on August 7, 2011 by irina.tyumentseva

This week we were discussing how household work changed in 20th century. In the article “Twentieth century Changes in Household Technologies.” we traced how housework changed qualitatively and quantitatively. We also discussed how technological sphere in household becomes another field of work. In our days people bring their household chores into internet space! The game Choir Wars is free online game that allows to turn real-life chores into points that are used in the game. Players can make a list of chores together and then game assigns certain rewards for them.

As one father was saying in his blog, the game helped to motivate kids in doing their house chores. He mentions that even though kids still got the same tasks and rewards as they did before the game, now they felt as they earned those rewards more then before.

I think what can be interesting for our class is that transformation that game makes of routine physically performed tasks into online game. It shows how much technology means in modern households and how it can be used in stabilizing relationship between family members.  Players report that they have less conflicts about who should do what and in what time. for those who have kids this game became powerful motivational tool.

The Choir Wars also can be seen as an epiphany in child marketing.  It manages to “sell” kids work that they usually don’t want to do. It employs media of computer game to make housework cool and attract kids by experience points and rewards they can redeem online after they finish real-life task.

P.S.:  If you know kids who spend all they time online, this may be the way to make them do something for their family on chorewars.com.

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History Of Consumerism In The United States

Posted on August 7, 2011 by nadya.mingo

http://www.articlepros.com/History/American/article-79412.html

After carefully reading this article, I have found the article to be relevant to the problems we are facing today; for example, the author in his introduction compared present day consumerism to that of the pilgrims whose lives were based on simplicity and frugality.  He sees consumerism as the main driving force in the United States today.

Another interesting fact noted in the article, is although some segments of the American society has had critical point of views of consumerism, it has prevailed throughout the years and has withstood the test of time. 

The author in addition sees consumerism as a concept that is being used by many as means of expressing their emotion. He noted that some consumers’ happiness is based upon their ability to purchase tangible things which they can consume and enjoy.  The study of the history of consumerism entails two approaches. Firstly, the rise of consumerism in the United States is seen from a general point of view of emphasizing some philosophical and ideological of consumerism in this modern society. Secondly, a brief history also examines a chronological point of view placing more emphasis on some relevant dates and consumer culture presently in the United States.

It is also noted in the article that consumerism has been growing steadily especially in the twentieth century and technological advances has enabled production to be increased. The author also credited American consumerism with the creation of public relationship.

The author in his view sees consumerism and globalization as two processes or forces that are interlinked and as such they are very important to our understanding of the role in which they play in the United States.

 

 

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A Culture of Consumerism by Molly Mallin

Posted on August 7, 2011 by mollymallin

In this article: “Children as Consumers” (from Global Issues, 2010) by Anup Shah, the author clearly makes it known how harmful advertising and marketing is on children. I focused on three points from this informative article.

First of all, there’s the effect of T.V. . The author points out and stresses how television in general is bad for children under two years of age because “…. brain development depends heavily on real human interaction.” (pg. #4).

The second point is the effect of food ads. The author discusses how over the long term, food marketing is extremely harmful and will affect a good amount of children. Not only does exposure to food ads have serious consequences on children’s health but also on their well-being.

The issue of good parenting skills verses marketing experts is also an important point of this article. Even if some children are not affected by ads because their parents have taught them good values “…. At the same time, parents are contending with many commercial entities which all have professional psychologists, sales and marketing experts as well as corporate lawyers and lobbyists to help continue such trends.” (pg. # 12).

This article seems relevant to this sociology class because of the movie we saw about children being part of consumerism. There are so many hidden facts about why ads are detrimental to children which I learned from this movie and this article. I believe everybody should be aware of these facts and truths because ads and mass marketing are part of our culture and because the way children’s minds develop should be taken seriously.

In our culture, material things and distorted values are placed on a pedestal. Ads and mass marketing does change the way young people think and probably the way they interact. There is definitly a connection between what is seen in commercials and how it is digested (and taken in by the mind). It seems there is a strong correlation between the affects ads have on children and how they process this information. So far, from the two sources I have seen (the movie and this article), the effects ads have on young people are overwhelmingly negative.

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