In some part, consoomer culture arises due a widespread negative attitude towards work. Not just the Blue Collar work, but even White Collar jobs--the kind of work that the Dilbert cartoon is based around.
Negative attitudes about work are common because very few people in the US really make anything anymore. We just buy things. Very few people who do work actually create anything--they just sell products other people made. The link between product and creation has been severed. What hasn't been accounted for is the fact that this gives everyone a sense of detachment from said products. Sure, you can attribute consoomerism to people who just have bad values, but we should also realize that our whole system of production is completely fucked.
Very few of us actually know who actually produces the goods we consume--yet another way we are essentially detached from the system. The workforce is impersonal, and people are reduced to a number, a labor cost. Therefore, we have outsource all production to foreign countries because its cheaper. Like, a shirt you buy for $20 USD was probably made by some factory worker in Taiwan for the equivalent of $0.15 USD. Some Chinese workers have been documented as having dropped dead in factories while making the toys you put in your McDonald's Kid's Meals. We shop, but they drop. But we never see these connections because China is over there and not here. It's easy to ignore the problems with our system of production when they're far away from us, but not so easy if they're next-door to us.
Not only are we detached from the process of production, consoomers are necessarily removed from the materiality of the products they consume. Products have been imbued with special meaning and purpose through branding. Advertisements are not informative, they are full of fantasy. Shampoo doesn't tell you it will clean your hair, it fills your mind with visions of sunlit beaches, warm sand, a cool breeze and fresh air. You're sold a dream, not a reality.
Corporations are funny in this regard. They don't seem to exist on the corporeal world. For many people a corporation is something that exists completely within the mind. This aspect is where consoomerism shows itself to be utterly and truly a religious phenomena. People will spend hundreds to thousands of dollars for some plastic that is shaped like their favorite super-hero. They will spend hundreds of dollars on deluxe version of a new video game simply because the game is tied to a particular brand or franchise. They will devote hours and hours of their time talking to their friends about the history and people in worlds that don't exist as if that information holds any value.
People who say they are a "fan" of something, tout that label as if it holds any actual meaning or value. However, the only value a "fan" has is as someone who spends time and money on consuming products from a brand or franchise. Their identity is necessarily tied to a corporation, much like a Christian might be tied to his faith in God, a Muslim to Allah, or Buddhist to Taoism.
