Consumer Society During Elizabethan England

Introduction
Consumer society can be said to have begun to develop in the last quarter of 16th century during Elizabethan England where profound changes in consumer patterns occurred specifically to a small section of the population (the nobility or elite). From then on thanks to the Industrial revolution which bought about urbanization and rising prosperity (as worker’s wages increased), emergence of fashion as a defining factor of style and mass production and consumption saw consumer patterns move from being an elite to a mass phenomenon.
The essay will aim to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of living as a consumer in modern consumer society. Consumer society is a society characterized by goods used for non-utilitarian purposes.
They also allow for predictability. Because shops specialize i.e. a shop strictly for shoes or clothes you have some guarantee that you will find what you are looking for in that shop. According to Ritzer “Much of the attraction of the shopping mall is traceable to its predictability. The unpredictabilities of weather are eliminated” (Kivisto, 2013). This goes to show that contemporary consumer society is specifically catered to the needs of consumers to make their consumption activity more
People who cannot make immediate cash purchases can pay in instalments to buy anything and everything therefore they can also make statements of lifestyle and meet the demands of fashion like all others within the consumer society. For example, people can rent-to-buy homes in affluent suburbs or even buy a pair of shoes from the Nike store in monthly