Neil Postman contributed much to the study of popular culture. Our focus today is the sway of materialism and consumerism on the American society. Postman wrote a whole book on the increasing power of technology over our lives. Toward the end of his landmark book, Technopoly, he expounds on the early use made by manufacturers of the relatively new field of advertising. See what he says about this on page 170 (paperback edition):
What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research, which means orienting business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable. The business of business becomes pseudo-therapy; the consumer, a patient reassured by psychodramas.
