ABSTRACT
Marketers claim that advertising does not create values or shape our way of life; rather, it simply reflects existing lifestyles. Marketers also claim that advertising does not create needs but merely responds to consumer demand. That may be true for certain products: Everyone knows that soap and milk exist, and advertising largely serves to lure people from one brand to another. On one effect of commercialism, many critics agree: people's hyper-commercialized society and advertising in particular, promotes materialism. Occasional small studies do provide some empirical evidence of a link between advertising and materialism. The lifestyle of consumerism in a growth-is-everything economy is largely responsible for global environmental problems that threaten the collective future. Before the first Earth Day, the environment was an issue of interest to few citizens and was not even on the political map. In the event that consumer appetites outstrip monetary resources, the business world has developed a convenient solution: credit cards.
