Summary. Consumers who are content and happy are less likely to buy things they don’t need. For this reason, numerous industries depend on creating and maintaining a sense of dissatisfaction and hopelessness.
People who are dissatisfied with life are more likely to turn to consumerism, eating, gambling, shopping, or sensory altering products such as alcohol, caffeine, or tobacco. Many advertisements try to build upon a general feeling of dissatisfaction in the consumer with statements such as, “Are you sick and tired of….” The product or service being sold is the remedy for the consumer’s frustration.
Unfortunately, this is like toxic dumping of negativity into our society. People begin to have a negative, sarcastic, pessimistic, and critical outlook upon the world and life in general. This, of course, it good for pharmaceutical companies selling drugs to make people feel better about how horrible the world is.