The 50 Ideas that Shaped Business Today

Consumers

A world of increasingly well-informed and wealthy consumers is driving a revolution in how goods are made, marketed and sold, writes Louise Lucas

From the immediate postwar era, when shortages, rationing and black-market dealings defined the consciousness in much of Europe, to the freshly minted middle classes proliferating across Asia, Latin America and Africa, the ability to see, want and buy is an integral part of the human psyche. Manufacturers of goods – both those we need and those we could comfortably do without – have monetised this with abandon.

Thus, more than a century after the first Ford motor car rolled off the assembly ...