Two main focuses of Berger’s Consumer Cultures are the critique for advertising and the
culture trends in customer choices. The author first critiques the culture of advertising by
focusing on the psychoanalytic, Marxist, sociology, semiotic and literary approach, and
demonstrates tremendous impact on the American society. The author claims that “Advertising,
as an industry, is often quite avant-garde and bold in the techniques it uses but, ironically, its
impact tend to be a conservative one- to maintain, as much as possible, the status quo (Page 2).”
In this statement, Berger emphasize the power of advertising to help maintain the market share of
a business, and from here he further implicates that it poses profound influence on the American
belief and values. The phenomenon that people are too exposed to advertising have largely
affected their customer behavior and acting as a significant influence factor for them when they
attempt to make a decision in purchase.
The second problem happens in the denial of consumer cultures. The author defines
consumer cultures as “are those in which there has been a great expansion (some might say a
veritable explosion) of commodity production, leading to societies’ full of consumer goods and
services and places where these consumer goods and services can be purchased (Page 3),” after