A THEORY OF CONSUMPTION- BY HAZEL KYRK, PH.D.
THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF A STUDY OF CONSUMPTION
WHAT is to be understood by the words which are so often on our lips, "consumer" and "consumption"? What activities and what problems are suggested thereby? How can we differentiate the group we call "consumers" from other classes of the economic order, and the phase of human behavior which we call "consumption" from other activities of the economic process? These questions are not raised merely in an attempt to secure precision in formal definition. A brief consideration of the meaning of these concepts will, it is believed, have another value. It will project, and, at the same time, delimit the course of the future discussion; it will establish its metes and bounds, and indicate its possible breadth and scope. Who, then, is the consumer and what is his status and function in the economic order? In the first place, it is obvious there is no separate class we may call consumers; they do not constitute a group who can be differentiated and isolated from their fellows. For consumers are all of us; consumers are simply the general public. In consumers we are dealing with a group which does not close its ranks short of the whole community. Yet this all- embracing group, the general consuming public, is for many practical purposes a most elusive and kaleidoscopic body. The daily and weekly press is always urging this body to assert itself; some one is always saying that it really ought to organize and take action upon this matter or upon that. Such appeals are futile in the majority of cases. Every one is a consumer, but each individual has a most disconcerting way of suddenly ceasing to function in that r61e and appearing in another with exactly contrary interests and problems. Try to lay your hands upon the general public and it has disappeared or is non-existent. The consumer from being every one seems to be no one.
Economically speaking, we all of us lead double lives. The fact that there is no consuming class or group which can be isolated or organized, and set over against another class, need not, however, make our concept of the consumer
any less clear-cut and well defined. The interests of individuals as consumers are definite, distinct realities, which may be differentiated from the interests of individuals in their other capacities. It is this common interest which identifies the consumer; it is the pursuit and realization of these common interests which mark groups of consumers. The word consumer, in short, is to be understood as an elliptical expression for individuals as consumers. Understood in this way, there should be no doubt about the meaning of the expression; nor need it lack definiteness or reality.
Nothing is clearer, however, than that the term "consumer” like many others suggests quite different things to different people. The popular mind, for example, by frequent association has come to identify the consumer as the person with a grievance. He is one who suffers long and is patient. In current literature he usually plays the part of victim with a producer of one kind or another, preferably a monopolist, as villain. Editors, magazine writers, and politicians work out plans for his rescue and future protection. During the war there was an interim in which the consumer appeared in a new role. He became the hero whose frugality and thrift would win the war. He was taught the philosophy of the clean plate and the empty garbage pail; he was urged to use corn meal and barley flour, and to forego sweets and motoring. Then the nation called him powerful, and either besought him to use his power wisely or, distrusting him, tied his hands. After the armistice was signed, however, all this seemed to be forgotten. Again he appeared in the daily cartoons as a meek and humble individual, cowering before the profiteer and the high cost of living. The popular interpretation of the consumer's place in the industrial order seems clear. In normal peace times his
interests are sadly neglected. Then the question is, Why does the industrial order serve the consumer so ill? But there are times — war times, for example — when the situation is reversed: from being the man with a grievance he becomes the man with power. The question becomes, What is the consumer doing with national resources and labor power? What use is he making of them? Are social welfare and the national interests being served thereby?
Concern for the consumer's welfare changes to fear of a misuse of his power. Students of economics too have their quite definite but quite different associations with the words "consumer" and "consumption." It is surprising to note how varied are their ideas of what a study of consumption involves. To one, a specialist in "theory," a study of the consumer and the consuming process means a study in the familiar field of price theory; to another, interested primarily in commercial organization, it means a study of demand, of the market from the standpoint of the business man, the salesman,' or the advertiser; to still another, interested in how the other half lives, it is a study of household budgets, of
the proportion of the income absorbed by various expenditures, for the purpose of estimating the adequacy of the income to maintain efficiency or to provide a tolerable life
Source from :A THEORY OF CONSUMPTION- BY HAZEL KYRK, PH.D.
