Daniel Gilmartin 255740 OUIL501 Context Of Practice 2 ‘How are sensory and psychological techniques employed by modern day consumer environments to ensure consumptive potency? “At the end of the twentieth century, with shopping escalating to a scale, density, and pervasiveness that operates more effectively as landscape than architecture, shopping composes enticing environments where sound, scent, light, air and even plants are all manipulated to extract the desired response from consumers” (p.142. Inaba et al. 2000). In a society that revolves around consuming, thousands of sites exist around the world that have been engineered to generate a need for spending money and consumer goods. Preying upon the basic human need to consume, examples of postmodern consumer environments include; Theme parks, cruise ships, casinos, tourist resorts, hotels, restaurants and shopping malls - every aspect, ranging from architecture to the scent of a place, is carefully considered to generate one thing; money. These aspects are closely related to the theory of psychogeography, which refers to "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”, defined by Guy Debord, a french marxist theorist in 1955. The psychogeographic elements in which Debord refers to can be seen in a number of modern day environments that dedicate themselves to consuming, such as retail environments, theme parks like Disneyland, and the city of Las Vegas; examples that will later be analysed. I intend to explore a variety of techniques that are employed and evaluate how they have been used for effect. Firstly, the birth of consumerism plays a massive part in the world we live in today and how we are able to shop, dating back to the start of the industrial revolution in 1760’s England, which ultimately changed the way goods were manufactured forever. As opposed to being made by hand, the development of machinery and technology in factories allowed for products to be made quicker, in larger quantity and better quality; “…one of the most important inventions, enabled textile workers to make up to fifty times more cloth than they could by hand”. (p.16. Kubesh et al. 2001). Additionally with other goods like furniture and clothing becoming available, Victorian Consumerism was a mile stone in the development of today’s mass consumer society; ““Looking” became a part of the shopping process. More and more of the middle and upper class women had time to spend looking for clothing, furnishings and more. Store fronts became more elaborate with the addition of expensive glass windows drawing the shoppers into their stores to view more of their wares, thus "looking" became synonymous with "window shopping”. (Malheiro, 1999). From this quote, it is understood that in the victorian era, emphasis was placed on the aesthetic of a shop window, in order to maximise sales, an technique that is still used today. It is only in the modern day that the art of retail has become so finely tuned, especially in department stores. The origin of the department store dates back to the early 19th century, which “educated people to want objects and played a crucial role in determining the essentials of middleclass life and aspirations” (Abelson, 1989). From this quote it is understood that the need for certain materialistic goods became recognised, which would then lead to something on a larger scale, referring to the development of a mass consumer society; “In today's consumer culture the mall is the center of the universe.” (Feinburg, 1991). As technology has developed, familiar and seemingly innocent inventions such as escalators and air conditioning have made the act of shopping a much smoother and enjoyable process, driving the idea of department stores further, and allowing the birth of shopping malls. The introduction of the electronic escalator, despite being invented in 1859, allowed for an uninterrupted shopping experience, creating a constant flow of people and products, as illustrated in fig1, and the ability to create a comfortable temperature inside shopping malls, reducing fatigue, making interacting with products easier than ever before. The image in fig1 is an image from the Otis Elevator Marketing Company brochure from 1949, which illustrates the link between sales and the ability to effortlessly glide from floor to floor, meaning that consumers could shop for longer. Although these techniques aren’t psychologically