An edition of Imagining Consumers (1999)
Imagining Consumers
Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (Studies in Industry and Society)
By Regina Lee Blaszczyk
Publish Date
June 19, 2002
Publisher
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Language
eng
Pages
408
Description:
"Imagining Consumers is the first book to tell the story of American consumer society from the perspective of mass-market manufacturers and retailers. It relates the trials and tribulations of china and glassware producers in their contest for the hearts of working- and middle-class women, who by the 1920s made up more than 80 percent of those buying mass-manufactured goods. Following a model pioneered by Josiah Wedgwood during Great Britain's eighteenth-century industrial revolution, successful American manufacturers closely collaborated with retailers to sort out consumer priorities and tailored their products accordingly. In contrast, companies that tried to stimulate desire, reshape taste, and encourage profligate spending by using the tools of persuasion - mass advertising, extravagant styling, and installment selling - found their efforts thwarted, for consumers refused to buy products that they did not really want."--BOOK JACKET.