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The Therapy of Consumption Motivation Research and the New Italian Housewife, 1958-62

Bibliographic Data

ID2390784
AuthorsA Arvidsson (0000-0003-0990-8579, University of East Anglia, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume5
Issue3
Pages251-274
Publication date2000-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/135918350000500301
OpenAlexW2014713400
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited15

This article describes the transformation of the image of the housewife-consumer in Italian advertising during the 'economic miracle' of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Drawing on market research, professional debates and advertising campaigns it argues that motivation research - an originally American market research technique with Freudian origins - was crucial in altering the ways in which advertisers and marketers related to women consumers. Motivation research made advertisers and marketers conceive of consumers as endowed with an intrinsic desire for self realization. The qualitative methodology that it introduced also allowed the marketing profession to observe and absorb the new ways of life that were proposed by the counterculture and the women's liberation movements of the early 1960s. Towards the early 1970s these elements blended into a distinctly 'emancipated' advertising discourse, a 'commodity feminism' where women consumers were encouraged to use consumer goods to mark off an autonomous, individualized subjectivity, rather than to ensure the compliance with traditional gender roles

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Business · Commodity · Consumption (sociology · Counterculture · Epistemology · Feminism · Freudian slip · Housewife · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Subjectivity · Taboo · Cultural, Social, and Media Studies · Decadence, Literature, and Society · Gender Studies · Law · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory · Marketing

  • Domestic Appliances and Industrial Design

    Ivan Paris•Technology and Culture•2016

  • "The Sustainability of "Sustainable Consumption

    Open Access•Paddy Dolan•Journal of Macromarketing•2002

  • Invented market traditions

    Open Access•Daniela Pirani•Business History•2024

  • Understanding Ordinary Women

    Sean Nixon•Journal of Cultural Economy•2009

  • Constructing prestige and elaborating the 'professional

    Open Access•Llerena Guiu Searle•Contributions to Indian Sociology•2013

  • Uma particularidade italiana? Psicanálise, modernização e sociologia do consumo na Itália dos anos 1960

    Open Access•Mauro Pasqualini•História Ciências Saúde-Manguinhos•2017

  • The Culture of consumption

    Richard Wightman Fox, T J Jackson Lears•The Culture of consumption•1983

  • Advertising the American Dream

    Roland Marchand•Advertising the American Dream•1985

  • Housewife or Harlot

    Marilyn J Boxer, James F Mcmillan•The American Historical Review•1982

  • Enchanting a Disenchanted World

    George Ritzer•Explorations in the Sociology of…•2001

  • Subculture

    Dick Hebdige•Subculture•1991

  • The History of Contemporary Italy 1943-2019

    Open Access•Umberto Gentiloni Silveri•The History of Contemporary Italy…•2022

  • A Japanese Advertising Agency

    Brian Moeran•Japanese Advertising Agency•2013

  • Reconstructing Individualism

    Open Access•James M Albrecht•Reconstructing Individualism•2012

  • Risk society

    Ulrich Beck•Risikogesellschaft•1992

  • The Artisans of Desire

    Antoine Hennion, Cécile Méadel et al.•Sociological Theory•1989

  • Selling the Mechanized Household

    Open Access•Bonnie J Fox, Bonnie Fox•Gender & Society•1990

Unique citing works6
Citations per year0,25
Citation span2002 - 2024 (23)
Citation velocityrecent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 5

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