Advertising, Consumer Cultures and Desire

What is a consumer society? If we think about it in definition, we would say that a consumer is someone who consumes something or purchases something and society is the world around us as we know it, people, places, things, etc. If we think about a consumer society and the rise of modernity we are actually talking about the rise of mass production in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The historical emergence of capitalism has become a huge demand for new and better products and these products change all the time providing us with the same product but a better image. In a consumer society, which we live in today, the individual is confronted and surrounded with a vast assortment of goods to chose from. For instance, take the automobile, everyday this invention changes. We make bigger, better, faster, and now even hybrids. This is an example of the vast changes that occur and make it very appealing to society to the point that we thing we need to change and go for the better. There is such a rise of modernity because we strive as a society to make everything more modern and to keep up with the times. In a consumer society, there is a constant demand for new products. Today, there is also the rise of demand for online goods and services to provide us with what we need, the ease of ordering and having it delivered vs going out and actually shopping for it. Everyday things change, get better, and show us examples of consumer society.
Capitalism is related to commodity culture because a commodity is something that represent us or complements our identities personally. With the rise of capitalism and particular companies whether privately or individually owned, can make things to suit ones needs and desires. For instance, advertising is made to speak to an individual by possibly advertising their brand and how the consumer sees it. By doing so, this can attract different people with individual needs and desires.
Visual pleasure is related to flaneur because visual pleasure was associated with the early nineteenth century shopping arcades and the now department stores which were built for visual pleasure to put goods and packaging on display for consumers to see and enjoy while strolling along malls or arcades (in Paris) as well as cities. The flaneur is known as a figure that moves through the city in an anonymous fashion who's sole purpose for doing so is looking. the flaneur is someone who goes out to browse or also to fulfill their visual pleasure by looking at big windows, bright packages, and sparkling goods. Other things that catch the eye for visual pleasure is enormous staircases, luxurious goods on large displays and elaborate decor. Mobility was also associated with the concept of modernity because window shopping and browsing in a modern society became very popular. The concept of strolling or walking through these shopping centers emerged as a key aspect in modern lifestyle.
When talking about presumption of relevance we are speaking mainly in advertising. Advertisements make people generally see things that they begin to think are relevant to what the advertisement is really talking about. We presume this as true. If an advertisement shows us a before and after photo of someone standing next to a bottle of the latest diet pill on the market, we automatically presume the relevance between the person and the diet pill is true because the advertisement is telling us so. Because advertising has such an impact on society today, most people may not find this image as absurd because the message that the advertisement is giving makes sense in our own minds.
In this statement, "Advertising asks us not to consume products but to consume signs in the semiotic meaning of the term" and what this actually is saying to us is to take the signs and the words conveyed in the advertisement and produce meaning and a like to which the product is encoded. The idea in advertisement is to sell the actual sign and not the product. The sign, or even brand, is the major selling point of the actual object that is on the market. The signs, objects, and words are what is supposed to suck us into the world of the consumer. Have you ever gone somewhere, perhaps a place where they are selling something and having a person advertise the product while demonstrating what the product can do, a good example, sham Wow can hold up to 12 times its weight in liquids and as you watch them soak it up you hear a person next to you say "I'm sold!" this is exactly what this statement means. The fact that words can be enough to simply pull us in without even thinking twice about the actual product itself!