Abstract

The concept of alienation provides important insights into the propelling forces behind consumerism. There is evidence that negative approaches and inattention to consumer discontent may be shortsighted and counterproductive to business interests beyond the short run. For example, several surveys have yielded similar, alarming findings with over half of the people questioned having limited or little confidence in business, particularly large organizations. Alienation, long a theme in sociology, offers businessmen a basis for understanding major sources of consumer issues and a means of collating the countless issues into groups, based on similarities, so that mitigating actions can be undertaken more efficiently and effectively. Principal components of alienation, powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, and cultural estrangement, serve to explain general types of discontent among consumers that give rise to specific points of contention. With these components of alienation in mind, businessmen can devise strategies for forestalling consumer issues before they fester to the point of capturing public and government attention.