Giant corporations whose sole purpose is to mass-market consumer goods exist in their current form because the television shaped the mass market.
Amid a boom in mass-produced consumer goods — washing machines, radios, couches, cars — people saw the appeal of buying on the installment plan.
Now, per capita incomes are on par with many parts of Western Europe, and mass-market consumer goods are not enough for the status-conscious Singaporean.
It may be intriguing to imagine what our toys do when we leave them behind, but there is something irreducibly grim about an entire planet ruled by mass-produced consumer goods whose producers and consumers are nowhere around.
The postwar era witnessed a boom in industrial design throughout the world, as factories accustomed to churning out tens of thousands of machines for war transitioned to making mass-produced consumer goods.
Since the 1870's -- the dawn of mass-produced consumer goods -- new stores, products and promotions have continually surrounded us with visions of abundance and supplied us with the means to fulfill our dreams.
"There was an astounding lack of attention paid to what people would use technology for, and what they needed," says Dr Saffo.Ferocious competition and increasingly saturated markets now mean that computer makers, like makers of other mass-produced consumer goods, need to understand their customers and design products for specific markets.
That led to the rise of the steam laundry, a business that in both Britain and America gave employment to thousands of women.Thanks to William Strutt, who appears to have invented the first mechanical laundry (and so surely deserves a statue in his honour), these businesses hoped to emulate the efficiency of the factories that were beginning to mass-produce consumer goods.
Following the 1881 "revocation of censorship laws on printed materials," these color lithographic posters appeared on walls of buildings and kiosks throughout Paris, promoting theater, dance halls and music halls, as well as a new abundance of mass-produced consumer goods.
It may well be impossible to second-guess ad hoc government legislation, but to miscalculate the size of a market (especially for high-ticket items like cars) suggests that some blue-chip companies simply have not done their homework.Only 45m of the estimated 220m households in China are taking part in the economic boom and will have enough income by 2000 to buy mass-market consumer goods.
