As long as they link their prosperity to their sales volumes, companies will continue to mobilize advertisers to encourage them to buy more and more, believes economist Philippe Moati, professor at Paris-Cité University.
The mission of advertising is to make a product desirable to trigger an act of purchase. In a context of demand for sobriety, what is its legitimacy?
It’s an old debate among economists: is the role of advertising to inform consumers or to stimulate their desire to consume? Comparative advertisements, which help to consume well, are relatively rare. Most campaigns follow a logic of seduction to help brands differentiate themselves and sell their products. They generally convey a hedonic promise and happiness through the pleasures of consumption. But the know-how of the agencies can also be put to the service of cultural change – required by the need to change the consumption model – and of raising consumer awareness of the right choices and the right gestures.
Isn’t the consumer supposed to have a critical mind which, in principle, should enable him to arbitrate in the midst of tempting advertisements?
Certainly, but digital (between big data, predictive algorithms and the use of influencers) allows marketing to be more and more precise and effective in activating desire. Moreover, this critical gaze is dependent on the cultural capital available to the individual and which contributes to defining the place given to consumption in his life, even in the construction of his identity. Consumption has filled the void left by the decline of traditional supports for self-construction such as ideologies, religion, class consciousness, work, etc. People who do not have sufficient social and cultural capital are particularly permeable to consumption. and the entertainment industries, and the values and models they convey. This is a particularly problematic point when the complexity of the world coupled with the lack of reading keys and happy utopian perspectives is a source of anxiety.
But with the resumption of inflation and the decline in purchasing power, or even the very great nervousness caused by the shortage of fuel, what is the future of our society of “overconsumption”?
This touches on the fundamental contradiction that we are going to have to overcome if we want to try to avoid the catastrophic dimension of the ecological crisis. In our society of hyperconsumption, the intensification of tensions over purchasing power and the entry into a mode of consumption under constraint are sources of growing frustration. How to hold on to a society that has become an expert in the ability to stir up the desire to consume but which no longer provides the means? The crisis of the “yellow vests” was, in this regard, a warning. There is therefore an urgent need to accelerate the cultural change underway and to promote other ways of individual well-being than “always more” in consumption.
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