Consumerism the savvy and sucker consumer?

Consumerism -The movement seeking to protect and inform consumers by requiring such practices as honest packaging and advertising, product guarantees, and improved safety standards.

Savvy consumer - Is someone who is a knowledgeable and who is a clever consumer who is knowledgeable in their specific market. Here is an article to show how to be a savvy consumer http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Savvy-Consumer

Sucker consumer - An individual that follows trends of fashion and who is victim of clever advertisement from businesses.

Advertisement and promotion is vital as businesses need to create awareness to promote and sell products to create more footfalls and profits. Research and development is used by businesses to research what consumers want to target the audience and create as much revenue as possible.

The marketing and advertisement is where firms separate us from our hard earned cash, and cleverly tempt us into buying their products, this can be done through a range of advertisement techniques.

http://www.foothilltech.org/rgeib/english/media_literacy/advertising_techniques.htm = here a few examples of advertisement techniques


                                                                                                                                                                      

This could be an example of Testimonial marketing using a celebrity to endorse a product, to gain revenue. Also this could be an example of Patriotism in sports consumerism using a British athlete like Jessica Ennis would boost sales for the clothing she is wearing firstly as she is a huge celebrity and secondly it promotes British athletics and sport.

Are you a savvy or a sucker consumer I believe it can vary on what the product is we all have weak points when it comes to consumerism and us buying products.

I believe im a sucker consumer when it comes to sport equipment mainly running shoes and football boots.

Edward Bernays was the first psychologists to understand the true power of advertizement and the way it works .

 
The main reason of him being famous was his actions during the cigarette campaign in America in 1920s.Women were only allowed to smoke in designated areas, or not at all. If caught violating this rule, women would have been arrested. Bernays created a campaign of the 1929 Easter parade showing models holding lit Lucky Strike cigarettes.  After the historical public event, women started lighting up more than ever before. Bernays in fact made women's smoking habits socially acceptable and this raised revenues for many tobacco companies in America. This shows the power of the advertisement and how it has control over us the consumers.

Evaluating this, are you a savvy or sucker consumer? and do you let advertising control you? 

 

Sports consumerism and sporting events

London 2012 and sports consumerism

London 2012 was a Worldwide event, where countries across the world compete in sporting competition for pride of their country and to compete for Olympic Gold.

Sponsorships dominate sporting events coca cola was a big sponsorship of coke as was all the sporting brands Adidas sponsored Team GB, proving that this was worthwhile. Gross profit for the Adidas Group grew 14% in the first half of 2012 to € 3.522 billion versus € 3.093 billion in the prior year. showing How sports consumerism changes whilst big sporting events takes place.

This is a promotional video of coca cola and their sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympics

 Sponsorships have dominated sport and the way it fund-raised the Olympics has created £100 million in sponsorship http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/100m-in-sponsorship--and-the-olympics-have-adidas-written-all-over-them-7973367.html  it creates a huge promotion for the brand. Jessica Ennis a British athlete won the heptathlon queen and wins gold she will be bathed in Adidas shoes and tracksuits it will promote the brand creating a reputation of being the leading sports-brand as Jessica Ennis is wearing the brand. Herbert Heiner the chief executive of Adidas announced that about 3,000 athletes in every sport will be wearing our shoes or clothes; every sport which effectively is a massive promotion to the millions watching the Olympics around the world.

 This video includes David Beckham, the hugely famous English footballer promoting the brand, also Team GB athletes Victoria Pendleton, Tom Daley, Louis Smith. Cameo appearances of comedian Keith Lemon, musician Example, and cricketer Kevin Pietersen with rapper Wretch 32 providing the soundtrack

This shows another example of sports consumerism using celebrity endorsement to reach the masses across the world with including British athletes, comedians and musicians

  Here is another Adidas promotion video, from the promotion of Adidas - Take the stage

 Here is another image of members of Team GB

The Olympics was viewed by the masses in the UK alone the Olympics registered 17 million viewers, also London 2012 broke the US record of 219.4 million viewers witnessing the London 2012 Olympic games.

That is 236.4 million viewers just in the UK and US that are witnessing promotion from large corporations across the world. Proving that the Olympic games is the biggest event in sporting history and that it has provided the demand for promotion for these large corporations Globally across the world.

                                                                                      



Sports consumerism

Technology

It's not just the shoes technology there are added technology that come with the shoes that are dominating sport's stores Adidas have now developed the Mi coach which is a chip that measures your performance whilst you wear the Adidas products, Nike have done the same with Nike plus measuring distances and performance. www.Adidas.co.uk www.nike.com

This shows we live in a post modern society and shows that we live in a technological culture using technology whilst conducting physical activity, these new products are storming the sporting markets with millions of these chips being sold worldwide.

These are some videos showing and promoting the latest technologies that both brands have released, both products are extremely inviting to the user, the brands have created a extremely capable products that have dominated the sporting market for both running and football.



What is this creating?


Capitalism a system created for economic growth and well being.

An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

Both companies are huge in Europe and the America, where capitalism is the way of life especially in the United States and western Europe showing that the companies are dominant in capitalist markets.

This proves both companies are perform well in capitalist markets and that both companies support capitalism.

Both companies would be acting against Karl Marx's theory and ideology, Both Adidas and Nike are supporting capitalist markets, whilst Karl Marx supports the political system communism he did not believe in social class differences. Recently Nike have been found to be producing their products in third world countries an example of this is Taiwan where sweatshops are located and that child labor is acceptable this would go against Karl Marx's theory of boosting profits for the rich (bourgeoisie) and paying minimum wage for the poor (proletariat)


http://nenaworld.wordpress.com/category/capitalism-sucks/

http://capitalismisover.com/nike-faces-new-worker-abuse-claims-in-indonesia/


Although Nike and Adidas are making these large profits their making unethical decisions proving that we are sucker consumers.

Sport Consumerism and celebrity endorsement

Celebrity endorsement is a huge part of sports consumerism. Athletes are used in all of the sports brands to advertise and promote their products, for instance Nike football use Cristiano Ronaldo.

   

 

He is sponsored by Nike football; each season Cristiano Ronaldo will release a new  pair of Nike boots which will generate huge amount of profits for Nike. Celebrity endorsement is an effective way of promotion, a lot of Nike football consumers will be fans of Cristiano Ronaldo. It is clever because now Nike can deliver the same boots as the Ronaldo wears; they will generate high amounts of revenue just from a small advert and Ronaldo wearing his own boots. This is the current and latest product that Ronaldo is advertising. www.cristianoronaldo.com

Adidas is also the huge competitor of Nike, both brands compete in record breaking profits each year, Adidas also use celebrity endorsement as a advertisement technique, the likes of Lionel Messi who is rated the best footballer in the world. Messi promotes the Adidas F50 boots which are the extremely lightweight boots, compact with Adidas technologies including sprint frame which is a technology that involves a extremely light weight one layered material which creates a precision ball control material and extremely lightweight boot. Also it the f50 boot has the Sprint web technology which provides stability at high speed movements. 3D texture and finish for better control at high speed. It increases durability and abrasion resistance, and finally we have the sprint frame technology The sprint frame  construction uses geometrical learning and the stud shape to offer the perfect balance between light weight and stability. 

Both brands summarizes capitalism, using footwear technologies is almost scripting another language if we take words like sprint web and abrasion resistance its an extremely clever promotion technique to draw consumers in from across the world both brands sell globally and advertise globally not just using the internet and and television but on sports wear as well. 

People are starting to learn the specialist global language, employees of the brands are learning it, consumers are asking for specific products with the specialist technologies who are aware of it. This is showing the branding and promotions work and that it is targeting the mass audiences. Both Brands are extremely well known and found globally due to the clever branding and promotional techniques.

This is the brand new release from Adidas called the Adidas boost, hyper reality? Yohan Blake has announced that with these new Adidas boost trainers he believes that he can shave seconds of his record time of the 100 metre race.  

Is this hyper reality? is it the shoes that's making it faster are we falling for this clever advertisement and promotion?

This can be questioned Yohan Blake has stated he believes that the Adidas technology that is included on these shoes will make a sufficient difference in the sprinters  own personal100m record.

Is this clever advertising making us sucker consumers?