Objective 1: Describe the role of TNCs and the media in spreading consumer culture.
What is consumerism? Is it the act of buying necessities or the act of buying what you need, what you want or even what you know you shouldn't have? Who is responsible for driving this desire? Is it governments of countries trying to spread the influence of their culture? Is it Trans National Corporations (TNC's) within these countries, is it the marketing executives within these TNC's, or the media by which their messages spread?
In this unit we are going to look at consumerism to try and understand what it is and how it works. Using the worksheet and powerpoint below we are first going to consider a few ideas. |
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Objective 2: Select two different branded commodities and examine the spatial and temporal pattern of adoption on a global scale.
Can you guess which two brands we are going to use for our case studies of consumerism? Coca Cola and McDonalds are two of the most recognisable brands in the World. They also both have a global reach beyond most other companies. How did this come about? Why are these two companies so successful and how have they achieved such a dominant status to become two of the biggest brands in the world? We are going to use the following two documents alongside pages 161-166 of the text books to find out more about these two giants. We will hopefully also be able to watch some snippets from a documentary series call "Secrets of the Superbrands" which is made up of 3 really good documentaries for gaining an insight into consumerism, globalisation and global impacts.
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