ABSTRACT

Humans have mined, logged, trawled, drilled, scorched, levelled and poisoned the Earth, toward the point of total collapse. A growing awareness of this has led the more enlightened industrialists to initiate exploration into the possibilities of what they refer to as 'sustainable consumption'. The human begins to manipulate and gain control over earth. Since the dawn of official consumerism in the 1940s, numerous theories have been pioneered that attempt to generate coherent understanding of the immaterial factors that influence the uptake and subsequent disposal of manufactured objects. Incorporation of a similar nature can be witnessed in the world of goods, where consumers desire the qualities of a product, brand or lifestyle and attempt to incorporate them through the process of consumption. Consumer motivation is primarily driven by social, ego and self-actualizing needs. The Nomura Research Institute (NRI) mapped the flocking behaviour of birds in an attempt to gain further understanding of the societal influence over consumer motivation.