Coca-Cola the official Drink

suburb, had made Coca-Cola the official drink of the community. For $600,000 per year

the company will exclude Pepsi and other soft drinks from official buildings and put up

drink dispensers and advertisements all over the city. The city council initiated the deal,

saying it was an alternative to higher taxes.99

Many people use the notion of the consumer society in order to describe the current

type of social organization in the developed world. This is not only because we live in a

world full of things, which we obviously do. Almost 24 hours a day we are surrounded

by consumer objects, and lots of leisurely activities we engage in can also be characterized

as consumption. But the most decisive step in the construction of consumer society

is the new role of consumption activities. In most of the modern time period, it has been

people's role in a production context that has been decisive for our social identity. The

impact of our self-consciousness as workers, farmers, professors, artisans, etc. cannot be

underestimated. But in recent decades we have seen a trend towards an increasing role

for consumption patterns and style in people's identity formation. With the increase in

consumption possibilities and the multiplication of styles and fashions, consumption has

to some extent been cut off from its old connections to those production-defined roles.

The plethora of goods and their varieties in range and styles has to a still higher degree

made consumption choices statements about our personality, our values, aspirations,

sympathies and antipathies, and our way of handling social relations.

Modern consumer culture is thus characterized by consumption-based identities, but

other related features of a consumer society include many of the other topics discussed

in this book: more and more aspects of human interaction available through the market,

shopping as leisure activity combined with the variety of shopping possibilities including

the new 'temples of consumption', the shopping centres, easier access to credit, the

growing attention to brand images

...