Behrends

How advertising and consumer c Behrends

Essay from the year 2005 in the subject Communications - Mass Media, grade: 1,7, University of Leicester (University of Leicester - Centre for Mass Communication Research), course: Advertising, Culture and Communication , 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Many inhabitants of Western towns have witnessed a change of their cityscapes recently. Small independent stores, restaurants and coffee bars have been replaced by stores of multinational companies, such as Tesco, McDonald's, Burgerking, Starbucks, H&M and The Gap. No matter if you are exploring the city centre of Leicester, London or Hamburg, you find more and more of these business companies, attempting to attract consumers with their big, bright logos. The same process can be found in the media - global brands such as Hewlett-Packard and Coca Cola advertise all around the globe, or in terms of Barnet et al (1995: p. 164): "Marlboro country is everywhere". This leads to a unification of city centres, and maybe even of the media. Particular questions arising around this issue are: are these phenomena results of globalisation? Which consequences do they have for life in a Western society? Is there a global homogenisation of culture, and if so, to what extent? Which role does advertising play in this process? These and other questions are discussed in this paper.