A Need for Shopping

         How often do you go shopping? When you go shopping, what is your motivation, do you “need” a new outfit, or has advertising simply made you “want” the newest styles? The basic need for clothing is to keep us from walking around in the nude, and to keep us warm. So why do we go shopping every season, I believe this can be explained not only by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need’s, but also by the need created by advertising. Just think of all the money the different clothing stores and magazines have made, because of the need advertising has created by making us aware of the newest fashions.

         Walking around The University of Texas at Austin, and most college campuses you can see that most females have embraced Nike shorts and a T-shirt as the style to go to class, where as the male population wear almost anything, but keep in mind that Sperry’s are the shoe of choice amongst both groups. Even though this is attire five days of the week, most students have a closet full of other clothes, and still want to go shopping for the newest things on the weekend. Advertising has created an appearance for college students to follow and, while other advertising has created a want for new clothes for other occasions outside of class.

(Instyle cover, 2006)

          Advertising has created a need to buy new clothes by creating new styles and using body image concerns to convince us new clothes will make us look better. These new styles and body image concerns can be seen in almost every magazine that targets females.  Advertising is in almost everything we do, when we are trying to relax by watching television or reading a magazine, we are exposed to ads which reinforce the need that advertising has created for a certain look. If you ask me advertising really has done its job when it come to creating a need for clothes. No matter how advertisers deliver the message, it must get across, because new styles are almost everywhere we look.

Instyle cover. (2006). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.shoppersimmon.com/information.php?info_id=press

Psychobabble 101: maslow's hierarchy of human needs . (2008). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NshVq7isSY