Consumer Rites

Reexamining the story of holidays in the United States, Leigh Schmidt shows that commercial appropriations of these occasions were actually as religious in form as they were secular. The new rituals of America's holiday bazaar offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane - a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandising and gift giving, profits and sentiments. In this richly illustrated book that captures both the blessings and ballyhoo of American holiday observances from the mid-eighteenth century through the twentieth, the author offers a reassessment of the "consumer rites" that various social critics have long decried for their spiritual emptiness and banal sentimentality.

Using a variety of print advertisements,this exciting and provocative study explores how the consumer is created in terms of sex, race and class. Essential reading for all those interested in issues of consumption, citizenship and gender.

Consumer protection policies create an environment whereby the clients and customers receive satisfaction from the delivery of goods and services. One of the disquieting features of India's democracy is that an average Indian consumer continues to be in a pitiable condition due to poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, and general apathy. Adulterated food, spurious medicines, and sub-standard domestic appliances are pushed over the counter with ease. Unethical advertisements appear in print and electronic media. When it became imperative to protect the consumers from sub-standard goods and deficient services, and also provide relief by way of compensation, India's Consumer Protection Act was enacted in 1986. The objective of this Act is to offer better protection to the country's consumers against the fraudulent practices of suppliers. The Act provides for effective safeguards for consumers against various types of exploitation and unfair dealings, relying on mainly compensatory rather than punitive or preventive approach. This book examines the rights of consumers and the protective measures adopted in India and other countries. It specifically deals with the statutory measures for redressal of consumer grievances provided under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. [Subject: India Studies, Economics, Business]

The anthology "Consumer Rights: Issues and Challenges" contains cutting-edge research and critical reviews dealing with consumer economics. The material shows how an understanding of basic economics concepts and analytical tools can help consumers make sound financial decisions. The reader is organized around issues confronting typical American consumers, such as advertising practices to beware of, tips for resolving consumer complaints, car loans vs. car leases, budgeting, and earning and maintaining a good credit score. Later chapters provide a different perspective on consumer choice by addressing topics such as consumers and sustainability, and globalization vs. localization. For each topic students will learn about the macro-level research, as well as current research on consumers' decisions. A series of case studies tracing the life of a couple trying to appropriately allocate their financial resources and make economics decisions provides real-world examples of consumer choices and analysis of those choices. Knowledgeable and practical, "Consumer Rights" is appropriate for upper level undergraduate courses in family and consumer sciences. It can also be used in general education courses focusing on becoming an informed consumer. Yi Cai earned both his M.S. and his Ph.D. in housing and consumer economics from the University of Georgia. He is an associate professor of family and consumer sciences in the College of Health and Human Development at California State University, Northridge. Dr. Cai's teaching interests include consumer rights, consumer economics, family economics, and family financial issues. His primary research interests center on consumer behavior and financial literacy, specifically consumer on-line decision-making and behavior, financial risk tolerance, and the international perspective on financial planning and education.

Becoming an educated and satisfied consumer can make your life considerably easier. By building a solid foundation of knowledge, you put yourself in position to know when and how to defend your consumer rights. In Understanding Consumer Rights you will find vital information to help you make sense of your rights. This book gives you a first step toward many important concepts, breaks them down into manageable parts, and provides some simple tools you need to help you try to get a fair deal. smart tips help you recognize pitfalls and take advantage of opportunities-whether through the Internet or at your corner store. Increased interest in do-it-yourself money management is a defining trend of our modern world, and the DK Essential Finance series provides the perfect personal finance library to help take advantage of this phenomenon. These outstanding guides provide a practical and impartial resource to guide you through important financial decisions. Useful questionnaires pinpoint one's financial status while easy-to-use charts and graphs help track cash flow, cut through the complexities of financial lingo, and gain the confidence needed to build real financial security. Readers can learn to invest online, live debt free, plan for retirement, or pay for a child's education.

A definitive history of consumer activism, Buying Power traces the lineage of this political tradition back to our nation’s founding, revealing that Americans used purchasing power to support causes and punish enemies long before the word boycott even entered our lexicon. Taking the Boston Tea Party as his starting point, Lawrence Glickman argues that the rejection of British imports by revolutionary patriots inaugurated a continuous series of consumer boycotts, campaigns for safe and ethical consumption, and efforts to make goods more broadly accessible. He explores abolitionist-led efforts to eschew slave-made goods, African American consumer campaigns against Jim Crow, a 1930s refusal of silk from fascist Japan, and emerging contemporary movements like slow food. Uncovering previously unknown episodes and analyzing famous events from a fresh perspective, Glickman illuminates moments when consumer activism intersected with political and civil rights movements. He also sheds new light on activists’ relationship with the consumer movement, which gave rise to lobbies like the National Consumers League and Consumers Union as well as ill-fated legislation to create a federal Consumer Protection Agency.

In this book, Traci Parker examines the movement to racially integrate white-collar work and consumption in American department stores, and broadens our understanding of historical transformations in African American class and labor formation. Built on the goals, organization, and momentum of earlier struggles for justice, the department store movement channeled the power of store workers and consumers to promote black freedom in the mid-twentieth century. Sponsoring lunch counter sit-ins and protests in the 1950s and 1960s, and challenging discrimination in the courts in the 1970s, this movement ended in the early 1980s with the conclusion of the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. affirmative action cases and the transformation and consolidation of American department stores. In documenting the experiences of African American workers and consumers during this era, Parker highlights the department store as a key site for the inception of a modern black middle class, and demonstrates the ways that both work and consumption were battlegrounds for civil rights.