Some Facts and Figures About Advertising and Debt in the UK
» Designer brands are often made in the same factory as budget brands. Nicole Farhi manufactures garments in the same factory as Miss Selfridge. Diane Von Furstenburg produces in the same place as Debenhams. Marc Jacobs and River Island share the same supplier.
» Almost all of the luxury brands’ manufacturing has been outsourced to large factories in places like China.
» Top Shop and its parent company Arcadia refuse to sign up to Ethical Trading Initiative, which campaigns for the minimum wage in factories across the world. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is £30 per month. Last year Philip Green earned £1.2bn.
» In 2006 UK advertising spend passed the £19 billion mark
» The average person living in the UK is exposed to 3,000 advertisements per day.
» We will have seen over 2 million adverts by the time we reach the age of 60.
» The average number of brand names memorized by a 10-year-old is 400.
» A recent study found that for children, consumerism is a significant cause of anxiety, low self-esteem, and psychosomatic complaints.*
» Exposure to mass advertising can have psychological effects such as compulsive buying, depression and spiralling debt.
» Materialistic people suffer more feelings of depression, loneliness and anxiety compared to those that were less materially orientated.*
» People who regularly view adverts become frustrated with their current state and are less happy. A study of 1,200 adults in the US, Canada, Australia, China and Turkey found that people who watched television adverts compared themselves less favourably than those that did not watch television. Participants that did not watch television reported a significantly higher level of satisfaction with their lives.**
» Over 1 million people in the UK suffer from “compulsive shopping disorder”, which has recently been diagnosed as a medical condition. Nalmefene, a drug designed to cure this addiction, is currently being tested in the UK. Most of these “addicts” are females under 25.
» More than 80%of Britons admit to regularly overspending
» Britain’s personal debt is increasing by £1 million every 4 minutes.
» The number of bankruptcies has reached record highs, with a leap of 66% compared to the same period last year.
» According to the APACS, there are more credit cards in the UK than people.
Today …
» Consumers will borrow an additional £313m
» 330 people will be declared insolvent or bankrupt
» Citizen Advice Bureaus will deal with 5,300 debt problems
» 24.3m transactions worth £1.3bn will be spent on plastic cards
Sources
Consumer Credit Counselling Service
Credit Action
National Consumer Council
Citizens Advice
APACS (the UK Payments Association)
- High Price Of Materialism, Tim Kasser, 2002
** Sirgy, Materialism & Quality Of Life, 1998
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