From Pokemon to Palm Pilots, It Was Year of the Consumer

On a day when consumers will be returning unwanted presents, retailers hope to start closing the books on what should be the busiest retail shopping year in history. They’ll also be celebrating a century of American consumerism in which dungarees and footwear have morphed into Calvins and Nikes and shopping has evolved from a necessity of life into a lifestyle statement.

Manufacturers, retailers, the mass media and Madison Avenue may lay claim to igniting the consumer revolution but, truth be told, it’s being driven by consumers who behave like a shopping Energizer Bunny.

Americans will have spent a record $185 billion in retail stores during this six-week holiday shopping season. That will push retail sales to an estimated $790 billion for 1999, up 74% from just a decade ago. Inflation accounts for less than half of that growth.

Consumer cravings extend far beyond Pashmina shawls, Pokemon toys and Palm Pilots. Outdoor fanatics are taking gourmet-catered raft trips down isolated river canyons, while retirees are being elbowed aside on cruise ships by young, casually clad travelers who want to be served fine meals by tuxedo-clad waiters.

“I used to always hear ‘cheap, cheap, cheap,’ ” said Costa Mesa travel agent Ricci Zukerman. “Now the trend is people making good money at a young age. And they’re saying, ‘Don’t try to save me money. I don’t care how much it costs. I want the best.’ ”

Consumer confidence has been fueling the spending spree. Consumers typically account for 66% of economic growth, but in the last year they have driven 95% of the economic gains.

“Whenever the economy is in an upswing, like it is now, people are confident--and confident people spend,” said Al Ries, a marketing consultant in Roswell, Ga. “During the Great Depression, people were barely eking out a living. . . . Those same people today would probably be $50,000 to $100,000 in debt, but they’d be super-confident and they’d be out spending.”

Economists know better than to assume that free-spending consumers will stay that way. “In most other economies, the consumer doesn’t contribute nearly as much as he does here,” said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center in New York.

Rising oil prices and inflation are just two of the sharp objects that could burst the economic bubble. But as the holiday shopping season closes in on a record finish, consumer confidence is riding high, augmented by savvy business practices and powerful societal trends.

In the post-World War II era, manufacturers got credit for supplying the right products for the times: fishing gear and luggage to fill free time generated by the five-day workweek and household goods and toys for families marching into the suburbs. A century ago, the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog was top-heavy with such staples as boot scrapers, buggy whips and corsets. By 1957, a third of Sears’ catalog sales came from Polaroid cameras, skin-diving equipment, televisions and other goods not generally available only a decade earlier.

Madison Avenue has primed the spending pump with advertising that has helped to turn goods and services into manifestations of one’s dreams. Simple, utilitarian representations of goods have evolved into “something that somehow could help to transform you,” said Iain MacRury, co-director of the Centre for Consumer and Advertising Research at the University of East London.

What you drink could “help make you a better person in the other person’s eye,” he said. “You drink Chivas Regal not just because it tastes good, but because it’s going to say something about who you are.”

Retailers did their part by erecting stately downtown department stores and, later, automobile-friendly shopping centers to court consumers. These days, they’re adding Web sites for people who would rather shop in their pajamas. Mass marketing--turbocharged by television’s blossoming in the 1950s--is on the cusp of another leap made possible by the Internet.

Geopolitics also has encouraged the urge to splurge. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, consumers worldwide sensed that “communism is dead, so capitalism must be the way of the world,” said Russell Belk, a University of Utah marketing professor.

“When people talk about ‘the American century,’ they aren’t just talking about the wars we won,” said Bruce Weindruch, founder and chairman of History Factory, a Chantilly, Va.-based company that archives corporate records.

The nation’s founders sparked this consumer revolution when they embraced an egalitarian view of society that excluded kings and queens. Juliann Sivulka, a marketing professor and author of a book about American advertising, said that “malls have become our cathedrals, a sacred place that’s home to our rituals--and shopping is indeed a ritual.”

The retail ritual is significant in a country where education, job status and a family name aren’t always enough to guarantee status.

“Identity increasingly is taking place in the sphere of consumption,” MacRury said. “And the object you desire is not an end in and of itself, but a part of your personal development.”

As consumers turn to goods to provide meaning for their lives, many follow cultural role models who make it easier to determine which trendy clothes to wear and what dependable appliances to buy. Pitchmen are plentiful--from Joe DiMaggio, who turned coffee makers into a household staple, to Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, whose images have been used to pitch Apple computers.

Nike Inc.’s association with professional basketball star Michael Jordan helped elevate the athletic shoe company into an icon.

“Jordan is clearly different from the rest of the people,” said David Mick, a University of Wisconsin marketing professor. “He’s successful, he’s a tremendous athlete, he seems to be happy, he dresses in a certain way and comports himself in a different way than other people. And everyone, from the Midwestern housewife to the Hasidic Jew, wants to be like Mike.”

Automobiles, perhaps better than any other product, provide insights into the consumer psyche.

Big-finned cars of the ‘50s spoke volumes about the boundless enthusiasm of returning GIs. During the ‘60s, auto design reflected a growing consumer sophistication. The oil shocks of the ‘70s brought environmental concerns to the fore--only to be upended by the greed-is-good mentality of the ‘80s, when such upscale car brands as Acura and Lexus were born.

Consumers who once worried about outward appearances now are demanding car interiors swathed in leather and equipped with cell phones, CD players, computer ports and sensors that automatically shape seats to bodies.

“During the past decade, cars have changed from extravagant, overblown kinds of cultural icons to more conservative yet increasingly complex vehicles,” said Ron Hill, who designed cars during the 1950s and now is head of the transportation design department at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Marketers are slicing and dicing demographics to an unprecedented degree, using the explosion of magazines and cable-TV channels that cater to consumers interested in war, science, sports, cooking, decorating, humor and dozens of other areas. And they are using the power of computers to offer seemingly customized marketing pitches to consumers.

Marketers also are taking aim at younger consumers.

When Chantel Popadiuk looks down the hallways at Corona del Mar High School, the 16-year-old sees groups defined by their apparel. “It’s like Gucci Central,” Popadiuk said. “There are kids who won’t wear anything else--and won’t talk to anyone who doesn’t.”

Popadiuk, who wore Roxy pants, a Hurley sweatshirt and an XOXO bag during a recent Friday night shopping trip to South Coast Plaza, argued that brands are a fact of life today. But the teen castigated classmates who judge others by their apparel: “That’s not what’s important. God is what’s important, being truthful, being yourself.”

At a Toys R Us store in Orange County, Mikey Mejia surveyed the Pokemon display. “They’re mine, all mine!” the boy shouted. That drew an immediate challenge from another child standing nearby: “No, they’re mine!” she countered, coveting the toys and cards based on the popular Nintendo video game.

Santa Ana resident Gabby Mejia wasn’t sure what to make of her nephew’s consumer zeal. “I don’t think we were so crazy about things when we were kids,” she said. “Maybe a Barbie doll, but that was about it.”

There is an obvious downside to rampant consumerism.

The winner-take-all attitude clearly has widened the gap between the haves and have-nots. Credit card debt is growing, and many consumers clearly are living beyond their means.

Madison Avenue often is blamed for pushing people to consume, but some ad industry veterans aren’t sure whether their craft spawns or simply reflects societal desires.

“You have to look beyond advertising to other factors that contribute to the attitude of buyers,” ad industry executive Jay Chiat said. “If you look at it in an analytical way, the performance of the stock market has more impact on buying cycles than advertising does.”

Marketers, who figure that what’s good for America is good for the rest of the world, are turning their attention to newly democratized nations and emerging economies.

The gap between the U.S. and other economies “is getting smaller all the time, in large part because media makes things happen instantly,” said Stephen Kraus of the Yankelovich Partners market research firm in San Francisco. “People are getting more similar as time goes by.”

But few countries have the natural resources, demographics and economic foundation needed to replicate the consumer mentality of Americans.

“For all the salivating done by corporate executives,” professor Belk said, “China will find its own way as it muddles into the future. They’re not going to look exactly like us.”