Research On Americans Consumerism In The Late19^th Century And The Early20^th Century

Before the19th century, the purpose of Americans’ consumption was meeting thebasic demand of living, limited by production capacity and protestant ethic,so thecategories of Americans’ consumer goods were few and consumptive level was lowrelatively. In the late19th century and the early20th century, production of large-scaleexpansion of capitalism, especially the appearance of scientific management method andapplication of Fordism widely, not only leaded to an era of abundance of consumer goodsbut an era of but made the general consuming public to the main force of consumers. Inthe meantime, traditional frugality as the core concept of protestant ethic also graduallydeclined. In the United States as the center of the development of modern capitalisteconomy, for all kinds of luxury consumption greatly, thus to hedonism as the core, themass consumption as the main characteristics of consumerism culture began to form. Inthe early20th century, Consumerism quickly spread to other developed countries and getgreat development after it generated in the United States. In the1960s and1970s,consumerism culture tend to mature, and in the1980s consumerism culture hadbeen popular in many developing countries, for the development of a global phenomenon.The expansion of consumerism on a global scale shows that it has a strong demonstrationeffect.The paper is divided into three parts, which are introduction, content andconclusion.In the first part, I show some definition about what consumerism culture is andanalyzes the corresponding academic researches carried out by the scholars worldwide.In the first part of content, I study the historical background and the process offormation of American consumerism culture; In the second part of content, I analyze thecauses of the formation of American consumerism culture from the economic, ideologyand culture and the development of mass media, etc;In the third part of content, I evaluate and analyze the negative and positive influence ofthe American consumerism culture and the influence to the developing countriesrepresented by China.The last part is conclusion.