Quotes & Sayings About Consumers

I have a vision that's about technology that empowers consumers over institutions. — Michael K. Powell

A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product. — William S. Burroughs

IDEO's Tom Kelley briefly mentions the practice of searching the fringes of consumer behavior in his book The Art of Innovation: Just as we often can't predict a product's success, companies can't always divine what feature or use will catch the public's imagination. For that reason, companies need to be in touch with what "quirky" uses consumers have thought up for their products, and be ready to restructure their marketing accordingly. — Heather Lefevre

The more people have time to experience the joys of creativity, the less they will be consumers, especially of mass-produced culture. I see that as a kind of new wealth that counts for more than owning material things. I also see art as something people will do rather than consume, and do it as a natural part of their lives; creative endeavors are a form of profound spiritual satisfaction. — Theodore Roszak

The people who benefit from this state of affairs have been at pains to convince us that the agricultural practices and policies that have almost annihilated the farming population have greatly benefited the population of food consumers. But more and more consumers are now becoming aware that our supposed abundance of cheap and healthful food is to a considerable extent illusory. — Wendell Berry

If we continue to think of ourselves mostly as consumers, it's going to be very hard to bring our environmental troubles under control. But it's also going to be very hard to live the rounded and joyful lives that could be ours. This is a subversive volume in all the best ways! — Bill McKibben

Teaching needs an ecosystem that supports evidence-based practice. It will need better systems to disseminate the results of research more widely, but also a better understanding of research, so that teachers can be critical consumers of evidence. — Ben Goldacre

In 2009, UnitedHealth, a leading insurance company, paid $350 million to settle lawsuits brought by the American Medical Association and other physician groups for shortchanging consumers and physicians for medical services outside its preferred network. — Bernie Sanders

Weight loss programs and health clubs have an ethical and legal obligation to adequately disclose details about program costs before customers sign a contract. They should also clearly explain how the program works and what is expected so that consumers can make an informed choice whether to join. — Bill Vaughan

And this thesis is somewhat connected with general social and political observations, because it establishes the fact that the number of consumers is considerably larger than the number of producers, a fact which exercises a not inconsiderable social and political pressure. — Hjalmar Schacht

Mutual funds were created to make investing easy, so consumers wouldn't have to be burdened with picking individual stocks. — Scott Cook

Like patents - which also seek to protect the little guy - unions were started for all the right reasons. But like patents, they can be twisted into something that hurts innovation, competition, and ultimately consumers and the country as a whole. — Sarah Lacy

The industrial world would be a more peaceful place if workers were called in as collaborators in the process of establishing standards and defining shop practices, matters which surely affect their interests and well-being fully as much as they affect those of employers and consumers. — Mary Barnett Gilson

This crisis is not just a crisis. Consumers are understanding for the first time that [their] degree of personal happiness doesn't rise past a certain earnings threshold. — Fernando Rodes Vila

Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way from not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring - to the carelessness of both producers and consumers. — Michael Pollan

The crash of 2008 was driven in no small part by unfair practices in the mortgage industry, which led to many consumers becoming trapped in loans they didn't understand and couldn't afford. — Al Franken

Hard disk drives were finally cheap enough for consumers to afford: If you shopped around, you could find one that held 10 megabytes of digital storage for about $700. — Brent Schlender

Real estate deals a lot with the government. It isn't like manufacturing, logistics, home appliances or the auto sector, which deal with consumers. — Wang Jianlin

Consumers never complain about ads being too smart. — Lee Clow

While the demand for organic food outstrips supply, we happen to know that 77 percent of consumers don't want genetically engineered crops grown in this country. Consumers can choose whether or not to buy organic produce. Genetically modified ingredients will deny us choice in the long run. — Prince Charles

Consumers are no longer concerned about coming to our offices and meeting our people like they used to be. — Jason D. Cass

Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business ... the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products. — Noam Chomsky

We are publishers of content and consumers of content at the same time. (D. Abbot, J.Hegarty) — Gordon Torr

When I joined Time Inc., one of the things that was important to me was ensuring that our content is where consumers want to read it. The Apple newsstand is an important place where a lot of consumers are. And Apple is really becoming a good partner to publishers. We are confident we can deliver a experience for our readers that 's really good. — Laura Lang

Fraud in the insurance industry is calculated to be $100 billion to $300 billion a year, a cost that gets passed directly to consumers in the form of higher premiums. All told, combined public- and private-sector fraud costs every household in the United States probably around $5,000 a year - or roughly the equivalent of working four months at a minimum-wage job. A hunter-gatherer community that lost four months' worth of food would face a serious threat to its survival, and its retribution against the people who caused that hardship would be immediate and probably very violent. Westerners — Sebastian Junger

At Revolution Health Group we will put consumers back at the center of the system by giving them more choice, control and convenience.. while building the first comprehensive, consumer-driven health care company. — Steve Case

People go to Disney because they know its brand attributes. We believe we have an opportunity to go with our content directly to consumers. — Bob Iger

We are an industry that has historically been at the forefront of defining new media environments in ways that benefit consumers and move our entire business model forward. We must ensure that while we are moving quickly, we are also moving smartly. — Jim Stengel

So, if consumers are like roaches, then marketers must forever be dreaming up new concoctions for industrial-strength Raid. — Naomi Klein

An overly expansive virtual 'toll' for the Internet that blocks consumers' and competitors' access to the e-commerce superhighway is not the right answer. — Marsha Blackburn

The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrence to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system, and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. — John F. Kennedy

Custom-made, of course. Tucker likes to get things custom-made. Probably because the ridiculous shit he comes up with in his head isn't available to normal consumers. — Elle Kennedy

As soon as people enter a theater they must become moron consumers who must be fed information. — Abbas Kiarostami

You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you know is that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food, who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more account than a whisper of wind. — Terry Pratchett

I don't think our fiduciary duty is to put shareholders first. I say the opposite. What we firmly believe is that if we focus our company on improving the lives of the world's citizens and come up with genuine sustainable solutions, we are more in synch with consumers and society and ultimately this will result in good shareholder returns. — Paul Polman

In the 1960s, it took months before someone figured out they could sell tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms to anyone who wanted to rebel. In the 1990s, it took weeks to start selling flannel shirts and Doc Martens to people in the Deep South. Now people are hired by corporations to go to bars and clubs and observe what the counterculture is into and have it on the shelves in the mall stores right as it becomes popular. The counterculture, the indie fans, and the underground stars - they are the driving force behind capitalism. They are the engine. This brings us to the point: Competition among consumers is the turbine of capitalism. — David McRaney

Brands no longer own their message. They can try to control it, but they do not own it. Today, consumers own the message. What they say about a brand carries more weight than what the brand says about itself. — Kim Garst

Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to please one's fellow man ... that's what competition is all about: "outpleasing" your competitors to win over the consumers. — Walter E. Williams

People learn to shop for churches; there is no loyalty to the church. They're consumers being attracted to one product or another. I think it's sacrilege, to tell you the truth, it really is. — Eugene H. Peterson

It is a pure tautology to say that crises are provoked by a lack of effective demand or effective consumption. The capitalist system does not recognize any forms of consumer other than those who can pay, if we exclude the consumption of paupers and swindlers. The fact that commodities are unsaleable means no more than that no effective buyers have been found for them, i.e. no consumers (no matter whether the commodities are ultimately sold to meet the needs of productive or individual consumption). — Karl Marx

Putin had told Yeltsin that he did not like election campaigns, and now he dismissed campaign promises as unachievable lies told by politicians and denigrated television advertisements as unseemly manipulation of gullible consumers. — Steven Lee Myers

The marketing people are always talking about something called 'consumers'. I have this image of a fat little man in baggy Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and a straw hat with beer-can openers dangling from it, clutching fistfuls of dollars. — Robert James Waller

By rendering their enterprises profitable, the consumers shift control of the factors of production into the hands of those businessmen who serve them best. By rendering the enterprises of the bungling entrepreneurs unprofitable, they withdraw control from those entrepreneurs with whose services they disagree. It is antisocial in the strict meaning of the term if governments thwart these decisions of the people by taxing profits. From a genuinely social point of view, it would be more "social" to tax losses than to tax profits. — Ludwig Von Mises

Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. — Noam Chomsky

It's really important that we have an ecosystem where small innovative entrepreneurs can develop new products and access consumers and have a chance to succeed. — Julius Genachowski

The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas. — Neil Postman

Regardless of the industry, antitrust law is meant to benefit consumers - not competitors. — Marvin Ammori

The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain's orders. The captain is the consumer ... [Consumers] make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. — Ludwig Von Mises

I much preferred the approach at the anarchist camp, with its shared tasks and collective responsibilities. Everyone played their part. There was no division between workers and consumers. — John Blair

You have to live with your product, you have to know it through and through, you have to look at it, understand it, love it then, and only then, you can crystallize in one clear thought, one single theme, what must be conveyed about the product to the consumer. — William Bernbach

Concerned consumers are realizing that they can use social media to organize themselves around shared values to start effective movements. Social media gives them a sounding board to share ideas, as well as a means to punish irresponsible corporate behaviors. — Simon Mainwaring

Since man does not create physical matter, those who handle material objects in the production process are not producers in that sense. Economic benefits result from the transformation of matter in form, location, or availability (intellectually or temporally). It is these transformations that create economic benefits valued by consumers, and whoever arranges such transformations contributes to the value of things, whether his hands actually come into contact with physical objects or not. — Thomas Sowell

We need tits and arse because they have got to be available to us; to be pawed, fucked, wanked over. Because we're men? No. Because we're consumers. Because those are things we like, things we intrinsically feel or have been conned into believing will give us value, release satisfaction. We value them so we need to at least have the illusion of their availability. For tits and arse read coke, crisps, speedboats, cars, houses, computers, designer labels, replica shirts. That's why advertising and pornography are similar; they sell the illusion of availability and the non-consequence of consumption. — Irvine Welsh

The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them. — Theodor W. Adorno

We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the business man is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals. — Theodore Roosevelt

The generation of consumers who swallow this pessimistic sentiment can't see past the product to its debased morality. Instead, their excitement about The Dark Knight's dread (that teenage thrall with subversion) inspires their fealty to product. — Armond White

Markets cannot meet the needs of the very poor. The desperately poor are not consumers who will create an immediate profit. — Jeffrey D. Sachs

Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force. — Virginia Postrel

The Openbucks Gift Card Payment Network taps into a whole new market of consumers that either by choice or due to limited resources may not have been able to previously buy goods online. — Jerry Yang

Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer. — Andrea Dworkin

With consumers buying two smartphones for every desktop computer they purchase, the demands, challenges and opportunities of the mobile space are reshaping our assumptions about design and user behaviour. — Jeffrey Zeldman

Competition is good for consumers for the simple reason that it compels producers to offer better deals - lower prices, better quality, new products, and more choice. — John Vickers

For far too long, America has been without a comprehensive energy plan, and today consumers are paying the price - literally - at the pump and in their heating bills. — Chris Chocola

The huge irony is that the more the gospel is offered in consumer terms, the more the consumers are disappointed. — Eugene H. Peterson

We are all consumers and should all be producers. — Charles Lindbergh

Diesel pioneered the idea of luxury denim, and we still drive this market. But it encompasses more: the consumers love the brand, the lifestyle, the mentality of Diesel. — Renzo Rosso

Consumers learn the value of being sure that what you want to buy is what you buy. — Maelle Gavet

All this talk: the state should do this or that, ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously. — Ludwig Von Mises

A BOUNTY on the exportation of corn tends to lower its price to the foreign consumer, but it has no permanent effect on its price in the home market. — David Ricardo

It art can only succeed through the cooperating imagination and intelligence of its consumers, who fill out, for themselves, the artist's world and make it round, and whose own special genius partly determine the ultimate glory of it. — William H Gass

Michelle was shocked at how many beauty products were marketed at balm for swollen eyes. She imagined thousands of female consumers sobbing hysterically all night and acting like there was no problem by day, smearing cream into their haggard faces at the bathroom mirror. She was part of a demographic. — Michelle Tea

We're pushing the limits of what a game is, and they think I'm beyond this limit. There will always be purists, but we've never got that push-back from businesses or consumers. Game dynamics are too powerful to leave bottled up in games. — Seth Priebatsch

Use vitamins in place of drugs. This takes some moxie to do, for we have been taught to be consumers of medicine. We have been taught that anything cheap and safe cannot possibly be effective. — Andrew Saul

My instinct is to assume that we consumers are an inconsistent bunch. We like competition if it delivers low prices, but grumble if it delivers the bad news that prices need to go up. — Evan Davis

In the end, advertising rests upon the fact that consumers are a fickle and superstitious mob, incapable of any real judgment as to what it wants or how it is to get what it thinks it likes. — Walter Lippmann

Our job is to ensure that meat and poultry products are safe, wholesome, accurately labeled for the benefit of the American consumers, and to make sure that they are in compliance with all federal laws. — Mike Johanns

By the time we, consumers, are aware of processes like genetic engineering, they're already being done. It's sort of like the war in Iraq: By the time we know about it, it's almost a fait accompli. And that's certainly true with science. — Ruth Ozeki

The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. — Jeff Bezos

If you set out to build the church, there is no guarantee you will make disciples. It is far more likely that you will create consumers who depend on the spiritual services that religious professionals provide. — Mike Breen

Try and inject into every commercial you make a touch of singularity; a bird that will hook on to the consumers mind — David Ogilvy

I'm quite certain the Windows 8 team is preparing to market IE 10 - and by extension, Windows 8 - as the safe, privacy-enhancing choice, capitalizing on Google's many government woes and consumers' overall unease with the search giant's power. — John Battelle

Getting service right is more than just a nice to do; it's a must do. American consumers are willing to spend more with companies that provide outstanding service - ultimately, great service can drive sales and customer loyalty. — Jim Bush

I think every business, really, has a unique reason for being, unique assets, unique attributes, a unique history. And that can be turned into a very attractive design story, essentially, that consumers can relate to. — Yves Behar

Consumers today are less responsive to traditional media. They are embracing new technologies that empower them with more control over how and when they are marketed to. — Jim Stengel

A strong currency means that American consumers and businesses can buy imported goods and services more cheaply and that inflation and interest rates will be lower, ... It also puts pressure on American industry to increase productivity and competitiveness. These benefits can feed on themselves as foreign capital flows in more readily because of greater confidence in our currency. A weak dollar would have the contrary effects. — Robert Rubin

If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you know they're just greedy, and consumers are just consuming for the sake of their own greed. — P. J. O'Rourke

Recession-resistant development produces things people need. Unsustainable growth churns out tinsel products that consumers have to be seduced into buying - until times get tough, when they quickly give them up. — Donella Meadows

It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy. — David Ogilvy

I want to be a real artist to consumers. I want to be the real thing for them. — Aaron Carter

Stated in the simplest terms, the recognized solution to the problem of foodborne illness is a comprehensive prevention strategy that involves all participants in the food system, domestic and foreign, doing their part to minimize the likelihood of harmful contamination. And that is the strategy mandated by FSMA. It is not a strategy that assumes we can achieve a zero-risk food supply, but it is a strategy grounded in the conviction that we can better protect consumers and the economic vigor of the food system if everyone involved implements reasonably available measures to reduce risk. — Michael R. Taylor

It seems then that instead of consumers' willingness to pay influencing market prices, the causality is somewhat reversed and it is market prices themselves that influence consumers' willingness to pay. — Dan Ariely

Far from being parasitic exploiters of the workers, most businessmen were innovators looking to outwit their rivals, by doing things better or cheaper, and in doing so they inevitably brought improvements to the living standards of consumers. Most — Matt Ridley

Our children, manipulated to become exemplary consumers, increasingly admit they do not feel 'in control' of their own Internet use. — Beeban Kidron

Television is the original social network. Consumers love great television, but they also love talking about television. Sharing with friends the thrill of the last episode, debating what will happen next, working to enlist friends to watch the same shows that you love. — Michael K. Powell

Providing patients and consumers with solid information on the cost and quality of their healthcare options can literally make the difference between life or death; and play a decisive role in whether a family or employer can afford healthcare. — Timothy Murphy

Government spending reduces the capital that could be invested to serve consumers and to produce new employment opportunities. — Sheldon Richman

There is nothing the Church can do except try to educate people to become good consumers. — Pope Francis

The problem is that the choice we make in the market don't fully reflect our values as citizens. We might make different choices if we understood the social consequences of our purchases or investments and if we knew all other consumers and investors would join us in forbearing from certain great deals whose social consequence were abhorrent to us. — Robert B. Reich

Imports create competition and keep domestic industry more responsive to consumers. In the United States, we import everything consumers want. So why not pharmaceuticals? — Chuck Grassley

I think this market space, this modern world we're living in, one of its greatest failures is that it can only seem to describe a collective in terms of consumers or clients. It never sees an audience or a community as part of the process. And that's something I'm quite proud of, even if the music is crap. — Herbert