It is impossible to escape. It is everywhere, and it is omnipresent. It is so ubiquitous that the human mind tends to become immune to it sometimes. The subject in which I am speaking of is advertising. But how does it, as an institution, affect us as consumers? More specifically, how does it affect our consumer culture? In the following essay, a number of factors will be discussed in detail that reflect how each one contributes to how advertising as an institution affects consumer culture in the United States.
             It is most important to first define each of the two key terms in which I am discussing. The first, which is institution, is defined as "a humanly designed method of handling certain problems of existence" (text pg. 12). In particular, advertising as an institution is "primarily designed to provide information on economic goods and services, but which now, under the impact of modern conditions, finds broader, noneconomic applications" (text pg.12). Socially, this institution influences our behavior pertaining to roles, and economically it influences where consumers disperse their wealth.
             The second term that needs to be defined is consumer culture. According to the class text, culture is defined as "the sharing of names - and this includes the sharing of names of material objects" (52). Consumer, in my own terms which pertain to this essay, is defined as a person who buys material objects in order to fulfill either social, physical, or personal needs. Combining these two terms plainly means that consumer culture is the result of people buying material objects, for any reason, because of sharing names with other people of the same culture. A great example of this comes from the textbook. If an American meets another American while traveling abroad, they do not converse with each other about The Declaration of Independence. Instead, they compare Jif and Peter Pan peanut butter in a playful manner (53).
             After discuss...