Consumer Sovereignty

Abstract

Soon after the end of World War II and for more than two decades, Western Developed Countries experienced a long phase of prosperity with high growth rates, low unemployment levels, many new products and innovative production processes. This golden-age was particularly spectacular in consumers’ activities. While the most prominent feature of the boom was the exponential increase of quantities and qualities, the demonstrative aspects of Mass-Consumption Society suggested that the leading part in society was no longer played by productive and financial sectors but by households (as a whole and as single units). At this time the notion of “consumer sovereignty” was one of the most adequate to capture the presumed influence of consumers’ decisions on other economic activities. Consumers’ leadership was not only celebrated in books and magazines, but referred to in the defence of Marketing usefulness as a new applied science adapted to the changing society.