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Consumer empowerment
Edited by Len Tiu Wright
Introduction
Contemporary social theory is now focusing on consumption as playing a central role in the way the social world is constructed and brands play a "key role in giving meaning to life through consumption" ([61] van Raaij, 1993). It has been argued that consumption can be conceptualised from cultural, social, and psychological perspectives as being a prime site for the negotiation of conflicting themes of freedom and control through the consumption of symbolic meaning within a consumer culture ([20] Elliott, 1997). A recent study has not only demonstrated that "to be a consumer today means happiness and freedom" but also points out that there are countervailing feelings of a pressure to consume when living in a consumer culture ([8] Benn, 2004). How did consumer culture develop over time and when and how did the importance of symbolic meaning supplant simple functional utility? Has it been a case of economic development empowering the consumer through the provision of ever-greater choice or is it more complex and contradictory than that?
The development of consumer culture in the UK through the twentieth century has been studied from a number of standpoints, including a focus on the department store ([47] Nava, 1996) and on the crucial role of women ([64] Winship, 2000). Other approaches have studied food shopping and the change from small local counter-service shops to large supermarkets ([1] Adburgham, 1989; [16] Davis, 1996). [60] Usherwood (2000) locates the major changes as occurring in the early 1950s when economic conditions started to improve and the lifting of building restrictions meant that larger supermarkets could be built. With the change to self-service came the need for pre-packaging and pre-selling of goods, and with the advent of commercial television in 1955 advertising could be used to "turn the relaxed viewer of yesterday evening into this morning's purposeful and brand-conscious customer" ([55] Sales Appeal, 1955). From its inception, the self-service supermarket became an arena for brands to compete for the attention of the consumer without the direct intervention of the sales assistant ([11] Bowlby, 1997). Responsibility was no longer retailer-defined. For the first time women became responsible for their consumption choice and could be considered active or empowered consumers ([38] Keat et al.