By Richard Martin, Steven Chaffee and Fausto Izcaray

Media and Consumerism in Venezuela

Lemer's proposition that rising expectations lead to political alienation of deprived sector is supported but this group also tends to oppose economic reform.
the developing nations of the Third World, those which export petroleum face the greatest opportunity for charting their own courses of social and economic development. Perhaps nowhere is this so clearly the case as in Venezuela, whose oil resources have made it the most afHuent country in South America, one in which many imported consumer products are within the purchasing power of most citizens.' As a Western democracy, Venezuela will be guided in its developmental policies by public opinion, which in turn can be traced to influences from its highly competitive and commercialized mass media system. In 1974 the newly elected administration of President Carlos Andres Perez announced a series of political and economic innovations, most notably the intention to nationalize the oil and iron industries largely controlled by foreign corporations, particularly U.S.-based oil companies. With the new government receiving better than 80% approval in
^ Thit paper was prepared in the M a u Comtnunication Research Center of the University of Wisconsin as part of a joint project with the Foundation for Development of the West-Central Region of Venezuela, under the overall direction of Prof. John T. McNelly. Support to the second author from the Graduate Scbool of the University of Wisconsin is gratefully acknowledged. A preliminary version was presented at the International Communication Association convention in Portland, Oregon, April 1976.

national opinion polls, the general policy of autonomous deveiopment appeared to have met with widespread acquiescence. Nevertheless, its implementation, which would require some years of phasingin, could create a hiatus in the high consumption levels many Venezuelans have been enjoying. A great deal of speculative literature links the mass media, attitudes toward consumption, and demands for political and economic reform in developing countries.^ Most theorists assume that mass media can be used to promote favorable attitudes toward consiunption of new industrial products. They generally agree also that excessive product-promotion in the mass media can raise aspirations to unrealistically high levels, with disruptive consequences. There is little agreement, however, about the desirability of using the media to raise personal consumption aspirations nor about the implications of these aspirations for the formation of political ideologies. One school of thought regards the promotion of new consumption as, in most cases, a positive contribution to economic growth and the development of industry. This group argues that increasing aspirations for consumption of modern products is a way of building support for an urban-industrial model of economic development. An opposed group of theorists holds that stimulating individtial con'For > general description, see "How Oil it Creating a New Power Center in Latin America." U.S. News and World Keporl, Vol. 78 (March 24, 1975). pp. 40-50. I Perhaps the best known works are Daniel Lemer. The Pauing of Tradiiionat Society (Glencoe: Free Press, I95(); Wilbur Schramm, Mass Media and National Development Paris: UNESCO, 1964); Urner and Schramm, eds.. Communication and Chaige in Developing Countries (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1967); Lucian W Pye, ed., Communicaliom and Political Devetopment (Princeton: Princeton l/nivereicy Press, 1963); Herbert I. Schiller, Mass Commttnications and American Empire (Boston Beacon Press, 1971).

296

Media and Consumerism in Venezuela sumption of the kinds of products marketed in the industrialized countries is dysfunctional for long-range societal development in tbe Third World. The style of consumption normally promoted by commercial mass media substitutes individual striving for collective effort and saving, in this view. From this ongoing debate there emerge several interesting research issues tbat have undergone little empirical scrutiny: 1) Do the mass media stimulate proconsumption attitudes? 2) Is consumption a function of pro-consumption attitudes, or simply of personal fmancial resources? 3) What is tbe relationship between individual-level attitudes about consumption, and one's ideological orientations toward national development policies? 4) What are the consequences of high consumption aspirations coupled with a low level of actual personal consumption, in terms of support for national economic development programs? High-Consumption Models of Development. Proponents of capitalist industrial models of economic development generally view tbe role of the commercial mass media as a positive one. Advertising of products that are produced and consumed in tbe already-industrialized countries is seen as promoting similar high production-consumption patterns in poorer countries. Rostow, for example, argues that the fmal, criterion stage of national development is "high mass consumption."' The development process that culminates in high mass consumption consists of setting in motion a self-sustaining spiral of expanding industrial production and expanding consumption, which reciprocally stimulate one another. Tbis usually means that great numbers of people must be attracted from marginal and agricultural sectors and integrated into the urban industrial working force, where
' W.W. Roilow, The Stages of Economic Growth(CambT'uigt\ Cambridge Univcriity Preu, I960). 'Daniel Lemer, 'Inlrmational Cooperation and Communication in National Development,'' in Lerner and Schramm. op. cit. pp. 103-125. > See Passing of Traditional Society. *I.K. Feierabend and R.L. Feierabend, "Agrettive Behavion within Polities. 1941962: A Cross National Study." Journal of Cortflict Resolution. 10:249-71 (1966).

297

they can be taught to produce modern products in factoriesand to consume them. Lerner has outlined the presumed role of the mass media in this process.* The traditional person vicariously experiences new, modern life styles ("empathy") via the mass media. Although originally concerned witb integration of traditional villagers into tbe democratic political process via empathy with political leaders,^ Lemer has lately focused on the development of empathy with Western materialistic consumer roles and styles. He argues that individual striving for material comforts brings new levels of personal satisfaction to traditional peoples. Further, individual achievements can be coordinated and aggregated, causing tbe production-consumption cycle to pick up momentum on a national level. The material satisfaction of individuals is translated into popular support for the political system that has facilitated an improved style of life. Lerner also points out the possibility that tbe balance between aspirations and achievements can get out of control. A wildly accelerating "revolution of rising expectations" can become a dysfunctional "revolution of rising frustrations." Healthy striving is replaced by alienation from the economic program of tbe country, and people respond either by regression to their earlier "traditional" way of life, or by aggression against tbe system. Either outcome would tend toward disorder, and a disruption of needed planning. The consequences of aspiration and consumption levels, then, depend upon the degree of disparity between the two, or what Lerner calls the "want/get ratio." Stimulating realistic aspirations should produce support for government economic development policies, but stimulating unrealistic aspirations can cause frustration, alienation, withdrawal of support for development programs and angry demands for more radical solutions. Tbe latter part of the Lerner hypothesis has received empirical support in a study using aggregate data on civil disorders in 84 nations.* A want/get ratio called tbe "index of systemic frustration"

298

JOURNALISM

QUARTERLY

was Strongly associated (r = .5) with an index of political instability that included incidence of demonstrations, political assassinations, arrests, coups d'etats and civil wars. The Deferred Gratification Model. A distinctly different point of view is expressed by an increasingly insistent group of writers who argue that a private media system which promotes consumer products is dysfunctional for a country's long-range development. Wells suggests that simply increasing overall production and consumption levels does not necessarily mean that the quality of life is improved for the majority of people.' An orientation he calls "consumerism" is often the result of multinational corporations seeking expanding markets for the products they generate. Their typical productssoft drinks, cigarettes, cosmetics, home appliances, patent medicinesdo not meet basic needs nor do they increase the productivity of the majority of people. But these are the kinds of products most vigorously promoted in commercial mass media. Furthermore, the consequences of advertising include not only the promotion of individual products, but the creation of "consumption drives shaped by the continually changing standards of rich countries." Fromm sees in this hypothesized phenomenon the creation of a new psychological typehomo consumenswhose insatiable hunger for consumer goods is stimulated and manipulated by advertising.' The alternative to consumerism, as Wells sees it, is "producerism," which refers to production of "standardized goods that meet the basic housing, clothing and food needs of the mass population, in addition to generating saving for reinvestment in the mass sector."* This policy would emphasize basic products, and services that help the population become more productive. At the personal level, producerist attitudes include 1) motivation to work and 2) reluctance to over-consume. Wells finds fault with the commercialized mass media in Third World countries for promoting "consumerism." The media would better

serve the cause of national economic development, he argues, if they were to replace product promotion with propaganda on behalf of non-consumption and other "producerist" orientations. Empirical Issues. In spite of their differing conclusions, the mass-consumption and deferred gratification theorists share at least three characteristics. First, they assume powerful direct effects of the mass media in stimulating a drive to consume modern products. Second, they agree that overstimulation of consumption aspirations can lead to withdrawal of support for government developmental policies. Third, they discuss their respective scenarios with very little behavioral or attitudinal data as empirical support. The major difference is that the massconsumption theorists feel that the media, by raising individual consumption aspirations, also promote solidarity and commitment to government modernization policies, as long as consumption demands can be met. Withdrawal of support and demands for radical solutions result only from an exaggerated want/get conditionunrealistically high aspirations and/or an insufficient supply of consumer goods. The deferred gratification theorists are less sanguine about media promotion of consumer goods in developing societies, arguing that the style of consumption usually advocated is inappropriate in terms of long-term societal priorities. They suggest that the goals of collective societal modernization may be in fundamental conflict with individual consumption aspirations. If this is the case, then "consumerist" orientations even at relatively low levels of actual consumption should be associated witli lack of support for nationalistic reform policies. While both groups of writers believe that an extreme disparity between "wants"
^Alan Wells, Picture Tube Imperialism? The tmpact of U.S. Television on Latin America (Maryknoll, N.H.: Orbis Books, 1972). 'Erich Fromm, "The Psychological Aspects of the Guaranteed Income," in Roben Theobold. ed.. The Guaranteed Income (New York: Doubleday. 1966)

Op. dt.. p, 45.

Media and Consumerism in Venezuela and "gets" will result in withdrawal of support for the economic status quo, the mass consumption position implies that this disaffection will probably take the form of disruptive, aggressive demands for radical change. The deferred gratification point of view, on the other hand, suggests that a more individual-centered, economically reactionary outlook could result.

299

Research Setting and Design

Venezuela offers some unique advantages, and at least one major disadvantage, for the study of the role of the commercial mass media in national economic development. Its economy is a capiulist system that is experiencing rapid urbanization and industrialization. There is extensive participation in the manufacturing sector by foreign corporations, which introduce capital, technology, products and marketing techniques from the more industrialized countries. The mass media system is largely patterned after the U.S. model; it is privately owned and relies heavily on advertising revenues. Finally, infusions of "petrodollars" have greatly accelerated the normally ponderous processes of capital accumulation and economic expansion. The oil money, of course, is also the disadvantage of^ the Venezuelan setting in terms of representativeness to most developing societies. Oil is being exploited to finance projects that represent long range economic goalsnationalization and expansion of basic industries, investment in agriculture, scholarships for Venezuelan studentswhile at the same time many Venezuelans are personally enjoying an
'"Aocofding to U.S. News and World Report (see fn. I). Venezuelans are importing "luxuries hardly dreamed of in most other Latin-American nations." "Questionnaire items were planned jointly by the authors and translated into vernacular Spanish by the third author. Field admmistration and d a u punching were conducted by the staff of the Foundation for Development of the West-Central Region, in Barquisimeto. Data analysis was performed at Wisconsin. ''The scales and details on the factor analysis used to develop them are available from the authors on request. "Alienation items were translated into Spanish from measures documented in J.P. Robinson and P.R. Shaver. Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes (Ann Arbor. Mich.: Institute for Social Research, 1973).

unprecedented buying spree.'" Most Third World countries have been forced, because of more limited resources, to make choices between these two modes of national expenditure. Sampling. The city of Barquisimeto, site of this study, is a regional center with a population of about 300,000. It-is the capital of the state of Lara and the home of three universities. It has a modern mass media system, with a number of local and national newspapers, 12 radio stations, and three network television channels. The sample consisted of 636 adult residents of Barquisimeto, stratified according to neighborhood to represent the full range of socioeconomic conditions in the city. Interviewing was done during July and August of 1974.'' Measures. All told, 75 attitude items related to consumption, advertising, and national development were included in the survey questionnaires. Five-point Likert-type response scales were used throughout. Most of the items were created for this survey. Correlations among items were examined, and factor analyses were performed to check individual items and to construct seven attitude indices.'2 Indices of attitudes toward advertising and consumption were constructed, with separate two-item "pro" and three-item "anti" scales because factor analyses indicated very weak relationships between them. For similar reasons, separate scales representing support for the new autonomous development policy, and for the previous policy under which economic development was in effect left up to foreign corporations, were created by summing four items each (see Appendix). Finally, an index of "alienation" from the government and politics was constructed from five standard items.'^ A final index of central importance was the person's behavioral level of consumption of major durable goods. This "get" element of the want/get ratio was assessed by self-reported ownership of automobiles and home electrical appliances. (Television and radio sets were

300

JOURNALISM QUARTERLY

excluded, since their ownership would confound our analyses dealing with mass media use, below.) These family-owned devices fit well as indicators of the consumerist behavioral syndrome; they are imported from industrialized countries, produced largely by foreign-owned companies, and promoted in the mass media as conveniences rather than as necessities.

Results
Correlations between some of our indices support their validity. For example, the anti-consumption index correlates positively (r=.31) with support for the government's autonomous development policies. These two orientations are theoretically linked in the deferred gratification model. Similarly, the pro-consumption index is positively correlated (r = .20) with support for development left to foreign corporations. The high massconsumption perspective sees these orientations as connected to one another. Both the high mass consumption and the deferred gratification approaches to the media-development issue assume a high correlation between exposure to mass media entertainment and a consumerist orientation. But we were unable to find any significant evidence of such a relationship. Our index of pro-consumption attitudes, for instance, exhibits correlations ranging only from r = -.O4 to r = +.O4 with self-reported frequency of viewing of various types of radio and television entertainment programs. Similarly nonsignificant correlations were found between these media-entertainment uses and our other attitudinal indices dealing with consumption and advertising. The consumerist attitude indices are also uncorrelated with our measure of behavioral consumption. Specifically, the proconsumption index correlates r = -.05 with actual consumption; the ascetic anticonsumption orientation correlates r = +.09. These correlations are not only low, they are if anything in the wrong direction. Our main analyses are based on a 2 x 3 breakdown of the sample in terms of the want/get ratio. The measure of pro-con-

sumption attitudes was dichotomized slightly above the median. Actual consumption was trichotomized, due to the rather wide disparities in our sample, in ownership of major consumer products. Our low consumption respondents owned little or nothing in the way of major durable goods (other than broadcasting receiver sets). The middle and high groups were quite distinct, the latter often reporting ownership of a variety of appliances and more than one of certain items, including automobiles. The middle consumption group reported modest levels of ownership, although well above the norm for Latin America. Consumption and A dvertising Exposure. A wide variety of self-reported measures of media use are arrayed against the six want/get conditions in Table 1. All these behaviors differ significantly across the six groups. The greatest overall differences are in informational uses of the media, particularly attention to political news. Much weaker differences are found for radio use, and for the television entertainment programsespecially adventure shows and soap operas. One hypothesis before us is that heavy exposure to consumer-goods advertising is responsible for consumerist attitudes and behaviors. Accordingly, we should look carefully at the types of media use that are strongly associated with this type of advertising; in the main, these are the broadcast media, especially the entertainment programs on television. The standard scores in Table 1 permit direct comparisons from one row to another. Regardless of the person's attitude toward consumption, radio entertainment use is negatively associated with actual consumption. Television entertainment use is curvilinearly related to consumption, with the highest levels of viewing TV comedies, adventures, and soap operas exhibited by the middle-level consumer group. The curvilinear pattern also holds for the overall index of entertainment use. The general hypothesis of direct media advertising effects on consumption gains little encouragement from these findings, which would be readily explainable by

Media and Consumerism in Venezuela

TABLE I Media Use (Standard Scores), by Pro-consumption Attitude and Level of Consumption Low pro-consumption attitude Media use index Radio comedies Radio soap operas TV comedies TV music programs TV adventure shows TV soap operas Entertainment total Radio politics Radio cultural programs TV politics Newspaper politics Newspaper international news Newspaper science news Books: politics Books: science Information total Entertainment/ Information ratio (N) High pro-consumption
+01

301

attitude
P

Lo cons. Md cons. Hi cons. Lo cons. Md cons. Hi cons.

+09 +05 -02 +20 +24 + 12 + 12 '^21 +08 + 12 + 11 +22 + 13 + 16 +20 +22 *23 -11

-23 -17 -15 -02 -03

-26 -22 +23 +22 +35 +52 +53 +50 +38 +52 *62 -36 (119)

+20
+ 16

-30 -23
+ 17 +26
K)4

.001
.02

12 -05 -78
-01 +01
03

-03
+32 +46 + 13 +36 +i +01 -11 +09 -09 +20 -02 -04 -28 -05 + 11 (45)

-30 -38 -23

+01 -19
-lA,

.001 .001
.02

+10 *00 +41

.001 .001 .001

.01

-19 -05 -32 -44 -36 -30 -30 -29 -43 +22

-25 -59 -56 -54 -60 -31 -36 -66 +31

-20
+ 101 +83 +48 +55 + 19
K)7
+<55

.001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001 .001

-27

(190)

051)

(84)

(47)

NOTE: Entries are standard scores, calculated within each row by setting the row mean at zero and the standard deviation at one, and multiplied by 100 for simplicity of presentation. Significance levels are based on one-way analysis of variance with 5 and 630 degrees of freedom. Pro-consumption score is based on attitudinal items (see Appendix). Level of consumption is based on self-reported ownership of household electrical appliances and automobiles.

simple access to each medium, based on the family's general economic capabilities for consumption. '* About the only evidence in Table 1 thiat would accord with the advertisingeffects hypothesis is found in the highconsumption subsample; those high consumers who reject pro-consumption attitudes are the lowest in their self-reported exposure to broadcast media entertainment. But given that these afflu" F o r detailed analytis of locioeconomic factors that determine media use patterns in Barquisiineto, see Richard Martin, John McNelly and Faujto Ucaray, "Is Media Expotun Unidimensional? A Soctoeconomic Approach," .lot iiNAL15M QuARTEiiLY, 53:619-25 (1976).

ent persons have the greatest access to media of all sorts, and are of a social status that would be associated more with informational uses of the media, it is difficult to conceive of them as uniquely the group that is most susceptible to machinations of media advertising. They certainly are not the kinds of people the theorists of societal development have in mind when they write about the potential contributions of mass media to economic advancement. In the lower portion of Table 1, a number of informational inputs from the media are positively associated with the

302

JOURNALISM

QUARTERLY

person's consumption level. But one's attitude toward consumption apparently has little to do with informational media use. Many of these types of media information are rarely accompanied by consumerist advertising; the fact that they follow rather similar patterns across the columns of Table I suggests that they are behaviors that neither lead to nor arc determined by advertising appeals to any great extent. The strong similarity of patterns for television and newspaper politics, which are simiiar in content but different in associated consumer advertising, is perhaps the best case in point. The lesser variations in media entertainment use at the top of Table I can be seen, then, as complements of the informational use patterns. These findings lend little if any support to the proposition that the mass media are luring their audiences into consumerist orientations or patterns of behavior. One disquieting note in Table I deserves special mention. The subsample with the highest want/get ratiothose who express high pro-consumption attitudes but report very low levels of actual consumptionstands out as extreme in practically every important respect. Contrary to what we would have expected on the basis of the media-frustration hypothesis, they are quite low in entertainment use of television. They are extremely low in informational use of all media, even radiowhich they do use for entertainment more than any other subsample. This group, then, possesses the attributes that Lerner has theorized might produce revolutionary orientations: heavy exposure to a tnass-commercial medium (radio entertainment), the high want/get ratio that this exposure would presumably stimulate, and a lack of accompanying informational inputs that might ameliorate their estrangement from the government. The Want/Get Ratio and Development. Even though we have rejected, for our sample at least, the hypothesis that the mass media are so strongly controlling consumer attitudes that they are responsible for a high want/get ratio among a significant proportion of Venezuelans, we

can still test the second portion of Lerner's formulationi.e. that a high want/get ratio is a source of anti-governmental or revolutionary sympathies. Table 2 shows the relevant data: standard scores on the economic policy and alienation indices, within each of the six want/get categories. Two sets of significance tests were performed: the one-way analysis of variance across the six categories, and a planned comparison of the single high want/get cell against the other five groups combined (df= 1,634); only the former test is shown in Table 2. In some respects the data resemble what we would expect on the basis of prior work, but in the case of overall opinions about economic deveiopment of the nation they decidedly do not. The key group for examing the Lerner scenario is the "high-want, low-get" cell, which appears in the fourth columns of Tables 1 and 2. This group stands out as the extreme one on every measure in Table 2. It differs only marginally from the rest of the sample in being the lowest in anti-consumption (F = 5.47, p <.O5) and anti-advertising (F=1.57, p<.lO) attitudes, and high in its pro-advertising opinions (F = 3.I7, p<.06). (These three indices do not vary greatly in Table 2 across all six groups, although our large N renders the overall differences statistically significant.) But this high want/ get ratio group is clearly extreme in its strong expression of alienation from the government and its programs (F = 63.72, p<.001). Overall in Table 2 there is a strong inverse relationship between the person's ieveis of consumption and alienation, and this tendency is somewhat stronger among those who express high pro-consumption attitudes. These findings regarding alienation are very much in line with the Lerner hypothesis. High aspirations for consumption exacerbate the dramatic alienation of the less-fortunate sectors of the society from the political system. The manifestation of this general alienation in terms of specific opinions on economic issues, however, turns out in Table 2 to take exactly the opposite direction from

Media and Consumerism in Venezuela

TABLE 2 Attitudes Toward Development and Advertising (Standard Scores), by Pro-consumption Attitude and Level of Consumption Low pro-consumption attitudes

303

High pro-consumption attitudes p

.02 .02 .01 .001 .001 .001

Lo cons. Md cons. Hi cons. Lo cons. Md cons. Hi cons.

Anti-consumption Anti-advertising Pro-advertising Alienation from politics

-05 -03
+07 +41

+05

+ 11 +01 -16 -58 +33 ^3 (119)

-22
-10 +23 +67 -47 +55 (84)

+01 +08 + 17 +21 +21 +38 (45)

+ 17 +21 +23 -60 +34 -22 (47)

-01 -22
-31 + 10 -26 (15J)

Autonomous development -21 Foreign corporations (N) +20 (190)

NOTE: Entries are standard scores, calculated within each row by setting the row mean at zero and the standard deviation at one, and multiplied by 100 for simplicity of presentation. Significance levels arc based on one-way analysis of variance with 5 and 630 degrees of freedom.

what we would expect on the basis of Lemer's overall theory and is more in line with the deferred gratification model. Instead of expressing support for "revolutionary" policies, the high want/get subsample is the one that is most resistant to the government's reformist policy of autonomous development (F = 29.28, p<.001) and most supportive of the seemingly reactionary position that economic development should be left up to foreign corporations (F = 29.43, p<.001). These two economic approaches do not follow mirror-image functions among the other groups in Table 2. Foreign corporation control is rejected mainly by those who are less likely to express pro-consumption views, if they are enjoying high or at least moderate levels of consumption. Support for autonomous development policies is more a function of a high level of personal consumption than of proconsumption attitudes. There is, then, some differentiation in the personal-economic sources of ideological support for the two components of the government's societal-economic reforms. Removal of control from foreign influence is rooted somewhat more in personal attitudes ("want"), and nationalization policies are favored principally by those who already are well-enough off

in their actual possession of household luxuries ("get") to withstand the temporary economic disruption that the shift to autonomous development might require. The alienation from governmental programs that is associated with the extremely high want/get condition, far from leading to revolutionary demands for economic change, seems to result instead in a desire to turn back the clock to the recent pre-nationalization period. That is, this alienation seems to imply a suspicion of governmental intervention, and a willingness to place one's long-range economic hopes in the multi-national corporations that are so often decried by Third World reformists. It should be pointed out that the type of data presented here, being limited to a single point in time, is not the most appropriate for testing Lerner's dynamic model. Lemer postulates a reciprocal process based on differential rates of change in the "want" and "get" elements, and predicts alienation leading to revolutionary demands when the "want" component is accelerating rapidly while the actual "get" benefits are failing to increase appreciably. This is certainly not the case in Venezuela, nor is it likely to be in other oil-producing

304

JOURNALISM QUARTERLY

countries in the near future. Our finding of an opposite pattern, wherein high consumer aspirations coupled with a lack of persona] consumer benefits apparently produces alienation from governmental economic reforms, may be peculiar to those settings where many sectors of the society are enjoying an affluent existence. Lane's "fear of equality" hypothesis is one possible explanation for this unanticipated finding. He argues that the more open the opportunity structure, the stronger will be the tendency of those who have achieved little to justify their lowly situation in terms of the proper operation of the existing system.'^ This commits them to the status quo; in 1974 Venezuela, where a major departure from past practice had just been announced, this could be more accurately characterized as the status quo ante. Being concerned with defending and justifying what little they have achieved under the traditional system, the lowconsumption sector would not aspire to improve overall conditions radically for fear that they would slip still farther behind. Another possibility is a "relative deprivation" explanation.'* Our low-consumption subsample probably contains many recent arrivals from rural areas; there has certainly been heavy rural-tourban migration in Venezuela in recent years, and Barquisimeto is one of many cities whose population is expanding much more rapidly than birth/death rates would predict. Household consumption patterns in rural Venezuela are generally even lower than are those of the urban poor. So, perhaps, low-consumption respondents were comparing their lot not with their urban neighbors but with their former rural neighbors. If this was the case, they saw themselves as beneficiaries of a system that made it possible to improve their lives. It may be asked why such persons in media-rich Venezuela would not adopt the total urban population as their personal reference group yardstick, through the development of empathy with the

modern affluent sector as Lerner suggests. An answer would seem to be found in Table I: the high-want, low-get subsample is exposed to less TV storyline programming than any other. This means that they have not yet seen much of the media portrayals that would shift their personal focus to more affluent reference groups than their own. To test this line of reasoning, we examined the correlations between the proconsumption attitude scale and our measures of exposure to broadcast media entertainment programming. Lerner suggests that, within the low-consumption sector, exposure to portrayals of more affluent classes via the media would produce pro-consumption attitudes. This seems indeed to be the case in the highwant, low-get subsample, in that we found generally positive correlations between the pro-consumption index and all of the broadcast entertainment shows listed in Table 1 except TV soap operas (data not shown; .12<r<.29). Of 30 correlations in the other five subsamples, only one significant positive correlation emerged between any broadcast entertainment measure and pro-consumption attitudes. The fact that positive correlations are not found in the low-want, low-get group suggests that the media "effect" is specifically one of increasing some people's pro-consumption attitudes. The strongest correlation between pro-consumption attitudes and the person's actual level of consumption (r = +.28) likewise occurs in the high-want, lowget cell. This finding fits with some of our conjecture above. It appears that these people are just reaching the level of consumption that includes television, and that exposure to its entertainment presentations is indeed stimulating consumerist attitudesand relatively high levels of personal consumptionin them. Having just arrived at this state (one (Please turn to page 335)
"Robert E. Lane. Political Ideology (New York Free Press. 1962). '* For an extended iheorelicjl analysis of relMlve deprivaiion and Ihe concept of reference groups, see Robert K Mtrton. Social Theori and Social Structure (Glencoe Free Press. 1957). pp 281-3g6.

Print Readers' Perceptions of Advertising Formats tions of intensity and directionality on other n^easurcs of advertising effectiveness. Several additional research questions are identifiable. In this study an unknown brand was compared to a leading brand in the product category. Would the results have been the same had the sponsored brand been another leading brand such as Hewlitt-Packard? Would the results have been the same had the leading brand been identified as the sponsor and the lesser brand the object of comparison? Would other target markets have responded to the variations in intensity and directionality similar to the student subjects? This research has demonstrated that comparative advertising cannot be accurately conceptualized as being unilevel and unidimensional. Previous researchers have attempted to draw conclusions regarding the effectiveness of comparative versus noncomparative and/or

335

"brand X" messages without considering the effects of directionality and intensity. This research demonstrates that these are significant variables that affect print readers' perceptions of comparative advertising. The failure of previous researchers to incorporate these variables in their research designs may explain some of the inconsistencies in their fmdings and controversy regarding the effects of comparative advertising. If the findings of this study are supported by further research, advertisers should consider the dimensions of intensity and directionality in their message development. Advertisers whose objectives are best met by generating interest should use a differentiative comparative advertising format. Advertisers who perceive believability to be more important than interest should use a noncomparative or an associative format. If a comparative format is used, it should be moderate-intensity.

MEDIA A N D CONSUMERISM IN VENEZUELA (Continued from page 304) long since achieved by their more affluent neighbors), they are loath to support governmental reforms that threaten to disrupt the economic structure in which they are advancing. The foreign corporation, as depicted in its media advertisements, promises a more palpably better life now. (Note that in Table 2 the high want/get ratio respondents were the most accepting of advertising.) The deferred gratification model for national economic development seems to be somewhat limited in its appeal, then, in that it is accepted mainly by the more affluent sector of society. In oil-rich Venezuela, this probably constitutes a large enough proportion of the total population that there is solid overall support for autonomous development policies. Opposition to those policies is greatest in the sector that might stand to benefit more from them in the long runbut which is being stimulated toward a consumerist position of impatience and demands for immediate inclusion among the haves of the society.