Quotations from:

The Feel-Good Society

How the "Customer" Metaphor
Is Undermining American Education,
Religion, Media and Healthcare


by James G. Hutton, PhD

photo of book cover

                                                                                                        

Pentagram Publishing
Copyright 2005 by James G. Hutton, PhD
All rights reserved.


ON THE FEEL-GOOD SOCIETY
 
“The indiscriminate broadening of marketing to churches, schools and other social institutions over the past few decades has been a major force in the transformation of the character of American institutions—and the character of Americans.”
 
# # #
 
“The conditions for the efficient functioning of markets—access to information, equal and open access to the market, and so forth—simply do not hold, in the case of social institutions. Nor is the function of a market—allocation of scarce resources—appropriate in the case of things like religion, healthcare and education.”
 
# # #
 
“If the function of markets is to allocate scarce resources, the more we treat social institutions as markets, the better wealthier people will fare in American society. Clearly that is what has happened in recent decades as the divide between rich and poor in America has grown wider. But is that really what we should be after? Are not these the institutions that should be serving as a check on the excesses of market economics, and insuring access for everyone to competent legal counsel, healthcare and education?”
 
# # #
 
…Everywhere American society once used the word “citizen,” we now use the word “consumer.” The implication of [that] observation explains much of what is happening currently in American society: As citizens, Americans had rights and responsibilities; as consumers, they have rights but few, if any, responsibilities.
 
 
ON EDUCATION
 
“Even if one were to buy into the notion of educational customers, it is unclear exactly what the ‘product’ is and who the ‘customers’ are. The most simplistic analysis reveals all kinds of holes in the argument of students as customers. Assuming that anyone is the ‘customer’ of education (a bad assumption to begin with), the student is not even the most likely candidate because he or she generally does not pay most of the bill for the ‘product.’”
 
# # #
 
“In just a couple of generations, most of American education has lost touch with what it means to be an educated person. Ideally, the goal of society should be to educate students to think broadly and deeply about issues that affect all people. Students who see themselves as consumers tend to behave in exactly the opposite manner—thinking narrowly and shallowly about only themselves. In so doing, they defy what Cicero described as the fundamental purpose of an education: ‘to free ourselves from the tyranny of the present.’”
 
# # #
 
“In the final analysis, the customer metaphor is, at best, a contributing factor in the decline of American education. At worst, it is the core problem….”
 
 
ON RELIGION
 
“One of Christianity’s fundamental messages … is to ‘be content.’ But marketing’s message is perpetual discontentment, which leads to never-ending desire to buy new things, in a futile attempt to satisfy the desire for more and more.”
 
# # #
 
“Consumer attitudes, as applied to religion, have some inherent dangers, not the least of which is what one Minnesota clergyman and professor called ‘a passion for immediacy.’ …Traditional notions of fear, guilt, responsibility, delayed gratification, sacrifice and service often seem to fall victim to self-defined notions of spirituality, immediacy and self-esteem.”
 
# # #
 
“A question arises not only about whether [the marketing of religion] may taint churches in some way, but about whether such marketing is antithetical to the basic tenets of most religions, and to the very purpose of most churches. In terms of the basic purpose of religion, the idea of consumption-as-religion turns traditional religion upside down. Whereas one might argue that the goal of most religions traditionally was to escape the trappings of life on Earth, opting instead for spiritual enlightenment and immortality, believers-as-customers often sacralize consumption—including its rituals, processes and artifacts—into religion itself.”
 
# # #
 
“In the final analysis, the issue has nothing to do with the trappings of churches and religion. …The issue is whether or not the notion of a believer as a ‘customer’ is compatible with the fundamental tenets of Christianity or any other religion. Unfortunately, it appears that the answer is ‘no’—that treating believers as customers is not compatible with most of the world’s religions. The primary reason is that a customer focus has the inevitable tendency of requiring that the religion conform to the ‘customer’—the essence of the so-called ‘marketing concept’—rather than admonishing the believer to conform to the principles of faith, hope, love, self-sacrifice, obedience and other lessons of religion.”
 
 
ON HEALTHCARE
 
“Proponents of market- or consumer-driven healthcare say that it will bring greater efficiencies to a massive industry that accounts for about one-seventh of our Gross National Product … customized, more cost-effective healthcare.  [They argue that] the potential benefits of market-driven healthcare are substantial, while the risks are low.  That is simply not the case.  The benefits are questionable, while the risks have already proven to be quite high.”
 
# # #
 
“Two or three decades into a grand national experiment of treating patients as customers, the promised efficiencies do not seem to have materialized, our standard of health (relative to other industrialized nations, at least) has declined, and the inequities in the healthcare system (based on socioeconomic status) remain wide.”
 
# # #
 
“Maybe the most important question in the trend toward patients-as-customers is to what extent adequate medical care should be a right, rather than an option available only to those Americans who can afford it. The purpose of a market, after all, is to allocate scarce resources. That begs the question of whether healthcare should be regarded as a scarce resource to be allocated to ‘customers’ who can afford it, by profit-motivated organizations. Or should the objective be essentially the opposite—to ensure that everyone who needs it receives adequate medical care, as the birthright of all citizens of a civilized nation?”
 
 
ON JOURNALISM AND MEDIA
 
“Those who have been around journalism for many years can attest to the dramatic changes in most newsrooms, in terms of the growing marketing and customer orientation on the editorial side, as well as the business side of the media. Among the many complaints of reporters and editors: a dumbing-down of news to audiences’ lowest common denominator; increased focus on scandal, sex and violence; increased conflicts of interest between the news and editorial sides of the media, including favorable treatment of sister companies within large media conglomerates; kid-glove treatment of advertisers; increasingly blurred lines between entertainment and hard news; and a decline in ‘enterprise’ reporting (where reporters initiate stories, rather than relying on news releases or pitches generated by PR and marketing departments and agencies).”
 
# # #
 
“Specific to the ‘customerization’ of journalism, the most important and disturbing change has been the fundamental shift in journalism’s basic purpose.  …In a nutshell, it has become painfully apparent to most serious journalists and editors, in all media, that the purpose of journalism today is primarily to package audiences for advertisers. That is a vastly different goal than traditionally espoused, and one that is sometimes diametrically opposed to the ideals of journalism.  The resulting segmentation and spoon-feeding of audiences has a number of important implications, not the least of which is that journalism becomes little more than an agent of propaganda, in which audiences are told only certain things.”
 
# # #
 
“When all is said and done, treating media readers, viewers and listeners as “customers” has turned journalism upside down. Rather than telling citizens ‘what to think about’ or ‘helping them cope with their world’ or providing information that will help them function as members of an informed democracy, the mainstream of American journalism now serves primarily to reinforce the biases of its audiences as a means of segmenting and packaging them for re-sale to advertisers.”
 
 
ON LAW, POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
 
“In the realm of law, juror-customers are finding that justice is increasingly for sale, and that the notion of ‘an unbiased jury of your peers’ has become the opposite of what usually results from the process of jury selection. Jury consultants all over the country are using focus groups, ‘shadow’ juries, mock trials, databases, and psychographic and demographic profiling to test-market their clients' cases.”
 
# # #
 
“In the realm of politics, voter-customers are told what they want to hear, not what they need to know. The result is an electorate whose votes are solicited by reinforcing their own biases, rather than expanding their knowledge and broadening their views to consider the greater good of the society.”
 
# # #
 
“In the realm of government, constituent-customers are being taught that everything is for sale and that private gain trumps public good, while at the same time, they are being distracted from the reality that even economic markets are not really free, but politically managed.  …Volunteerism and a sense of community—cornerstones to effective government—may be lost altogether.”
 
# # #
 
“The mindlessness with which free-market ideology is sometimes applied came to the forefront in 2003, when the Pentagon’s Terrorism Awareness Information Office, under the direction of former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, proposed an on-line futures trading market in which anonymous speculators would bet on future terrorist attacks, coups and assassinations. 
 
“…One of the great ironies, of course, is that local, state and federal governments in America have virtually eliminated truly free markets … in business and the economy. …The U.S., for most purposes, is at least as much a politically managed economy as it is a free market. It is difficult to think of a major industry in the U.S. that is not controlled or circumscribed in critical ways by laws and government regulations and policies. …Furthermore, the concept of free economic markets in the U.S. is under increasing assault on at least three fronts: lobbying, industry consolidation and conflicts of interest.”
 
# # #
 
“All told, the influence of business and marketing in the public arena has created citizen-customers who behave almost the opposite of how we need citizens to behave.…  Can community and even democracy itself remain vibrant in a nation of customers, rather than citizens, where self-interest overrides responsibility and a sense of the common good?”
 
 
ON ART AND SCIENCE
 
“Because they are often highly individualistic endeavors, art and science may come much closer to fitting the definition of ‘markets’ than government, education and healthcare. There is also substantial evidence of market-driven creativity and innovation in these fields—if the ‘market’ is truly a market, in the sense that buyers and sellers have open access to the market and to market information.  For example, a new generation of indie (independent) films and music, based on digital technologies and promoted/distributed largely over the Internet, appears to be quite promising.
 
“At the same time, however, most of the trends in market-driven art and science are rather ominous. When film directors are ‘encouraged’ to use focus groups to determine which of three alternative endings to use in their films, when they are ‘encouraged’ to write their scripts around brands and products that have paid for product placements in the film, and when they are forced to submit their films for review by executives at the mega-media company that owns the studio (to determine if the films conflict with corporate interests), one has to wonder if the ‘market’ is really the best way to determine art. Similarly, when a university professor is denied tenure because he or she refuses to embrace a corporate-sponsored research program at the university, one can’t help but question whether such market-driven science is appropriate.” 
 
# # #
 
“The three greatest motivators of art and science—curiosity, heresy and passion—are not and cannot be beholden to markets or ‘customers.’” 
 
 
ON SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM
 
“We as a society need to redefine some of our most basic ideas about markets, as well as our most basic ideas about marketing. …The question of how far marketing should be broadened (or narrowed, as the case may be) depends largely on how one answers complementary questions about the nature of institutions and the nature of markets. …In the 21st century … those questions are too important to be left to economists. In an age of production, economists should be among the most visible philosophers of a society; in an age of consumption, scholars of marketing and consumer behavior should be the preeminent philosophers. Ironically, however, it may be necessary for marketing scholars to narrow their concept of marketing in order to broaden their influence on society at large.”
 
# # #
 
“It appears that while many marketing techniques and ideas legitimately further the objectives of social institutions, those institutions begin to lose their way when they adopt ‘product’ and ‘consumer’ metaphors.”
 
# # #
 
“Marketing is misapplied to social institutions whenever marketing philosophies, strategies or tactics serve to:
 
· Undermine the fundamental tenets or purpose of an institution (for example, when churches substitute more-marketable concepts like self-gratification for principles such as sacrifice and selflessness).
 
· Substitute a “customer” mentality for a more appropriate metaphor (for example, when students are encouraged to think of themselves as customers rather than citizens or students).
 
· Help give people what they want at the expense of what they need, usurping the fundamental moral responsibility of the institution (for example, when doctors prescribe antibiotics, knowing that they are inappropriate, for the sake of keeping patients happy).”
 
# # #
 
“If America’s social institutions wish to regain their moral authority, they must stop pandering and start leading. The reasons that leadership is so desperately needed are simple:
 
· Marketing, as applied to social institutions, goes awry at the point where it becomes subservient to people’s desires rather than their needs.
 
· Identifying and serving people’s desires requires little intelligence, courage or leadership. Identifying and serving people’s needs, on the other hand, takes wisdom, courage and great leadership.”
 
# # #
 
“The frequent lack of courage and leadership on the part of teachers, ministers, journalists, doctors, lawyers and politicians has been a disturbing state of affairs for many years now. The result has been a lost sense of community and a lost sense of collective responsibility over those things that social institutions should be circumscribing and protecting—things such as national defense, public safety (from sources like defective products and environment hazards), ethics, fairness, and equal access to law, healthcare, education and information.”
 
# # #
 
“One has to wonder what unrestrained consumerism in America has really achieved, even in the context of economics. Not equality. Not better education, healthcare or spiritual contentment. Not happiness. …Historical public-opinion surveys show that Americans’ ‘happiness’ peaked in 1957—despite the fact that the average family today has far more material possessions such as cars, clothes and appliances, and a house that is twice as large as in the 1950s.”
 
# # #
 
“Consumerism has largely failed us, even in the realm of economics and personal happiness. There is far less reason to believe that consumerism and the ‘customer’ metaphor will be a blueprint for either public or private happiness, when it comes to the creation and sustenance of the institutions that are the underpinnings of our society.”


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