The Consumer Map

Things change. That’s undeniable. But why do they Change? Because of natural forces? Or is change propelled by the ulterior motives of certain individuals. The answer is of course both. But what I’m most interested in is which has more effect then the other.
Over the past two hundred years, society has gone from an economy where local communities produce their own goods and operate independently to an economy where consumers have all their goods produced outside their community and are hopelessly dependent on a single global network of goods and services. Did it get this way as a natural progression of society’s growth? Or did it arise from the natural greed inherent in the capitalist system? Once again, both.
Advertisers have been accused of creating needs that the consumer never knew they had. Numerous holidays now exist only to encourage people to buys goods they would never normally buy. But do people accept this climate of frivolousness because they’ve been conditioned to? Or does the human mind naturally lean toward more numerous and diverse options? This one i think has an actual answer.
I don’t think people are stupid enough to buy something because Google or any other advertiser tells them too. Advertising has pretty much taken over our society, but people still ultimately buy things because the want to, not because their told to. Which makes the whole monster of advertising kind of pointless, right? Well, not exactly. People know what they want, but they usually don’t know where to get it. That’s where advertising ultimately makes its mark. Each advertisement is like a traffic sign pointing in a different direction. No direction is wrong. But if you only have one sign telling you where to go, you’re going to go there for lack of a better option.
If everybody could advertise at an equal rate we’d have a much more balanced consumer map. But that’s not how the system works, is it? The map is dominated by the major players, and when a smaller name breaks through its usually because of some unusual strength. That's how capitalism works unfortunately. A few players grow larger and eat up all the rest. And i can't see it changing anytime soon. In the meantime, all we can do is look a little closer and try and find the names that have slipped through the cracks.