Consumer revolution

In the 1982 symposium, The Birh of a Consumer Society , Neil McKendrick identifies some of the chief features of the demand-side of the social and economic of the 18th century. What did it mean for England to become a “consumer society”?

1. More people than ever could acquire material possessions.

2. Objects that had long belonged only to the rich now became available to a much larger segment of society.

3. Objects once acquired by inheritance, if at all, were increasingly acquired by purchase.

4. Purchases were no longer only out of need, but out of desire to follow fashion.

5. Objects earlier bought once-for-life could be re-acquired several times (new articles of clothing, new carriages).

6. Instead of having to wait for the holiday fairs to purchase goods, consumers could buy any day but Sunday at one of the thousands of shops that were established during the 18th century.

7. What was once considered a “luxury” because seen as a “decency”; and what was once considered necessary for “decency” became a “necessity.”

8. Goods once prized for durability became prized for fashionability.

9. Fashions changed according to shorter cycles.

10. Englishwomen outside London could not follow the latest fashions in the press and could purchase them in commercial outlets throughout England.

11. Fashion magazines made fashion an object of close study.

12. Many more people could purchase the latest fashions in clothing or other goods.

He summarizes: “There was a consumer boom in England in the eighteenth century. In the third quarter of the century that boom reached revolutionary proportions. Men, and in particular women, bought as never before. Even their children enjoyed access to a greater number of goods than ever before. In fact, the later eighteenth century saw such a convulsion of getting and spending, such an eruption of new prosperity, and such an explosion of new production and marketing techniques, that a greater proportion of the population than in any previous society in human history was able to enjoy the pleasures of buying consumer goods. They bought not only necessities, but decencies, and even luxuries.”