Corporate Consumption Complex Controls Much Of Consumer “Choices”
A handful of multibillion-dollar corporations control everything from what people eat to how they dress, to what they consume in terms of alcohol – in the industrialized world.
The Business Insider shares some charts on what it calls:
… the “illusion of choice” [which] has become an unavoidable reality for the modern American shopper.”
For example, the charts show:
- 10 corporations control almost everything consumers in the US eat.
- 7 corporations control the vast majority of beauty brands.
- The clothing industry is dominated, too, by 10 massive corporations.
Big Alcohol: beer giant controls every third bottle sold
As Business Insider reports, AB InBev — the producer of brands including Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois — and SABMiller — which produces brands like Fosters, Peroni, Miller, and Grolsch — are responsible for the majority of sales in the beer industry. And, in 2016, the two companies merged.
One big ‘beerhemoth’
According to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch chart, in 2014 AB InBev and SABMiller alone controlled about 58% of the beer industry’s $33 billion in global profits.
Corporate Consumption Complex
The corporations, most of them producing harmful consumer products that fuel the global epidemic of non-communicable diseases – like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and lung disease – are closely connected, inter-related and collaborating in the web of the corporate consumption complex.
For example, the alcohol and tobacco industry are closely knit together, profiting from each other, learning from each other and copying each other’s business methods and tactics-
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For further reading:
Corporate Consumption Complex And The Need For A New Public Health Agenda