Commercialization

In the global consumer societies of our times, very few discussions of commercialization are able to be conducted without invoking a moral response. Indeed, it is rare that mention of the single word commercialization is not followed by the immediate arousal of human emotions that can be charted somewhere along on a broad spectrum of feelings, from a sense of quiet unease all the way through to that of outright hostility and moral condemnation, such are the powerful political and ethical anxieties that the term is capable of invoking.

It is possible to argue that these reactions are provoked by an increasing awareness of the uncomfortable fact that one of the most distinctive characteristics by which to define global consumer societies is the dominance that has been assumed by the various processes associated with commercialization. Specifically, how the ostensibly neutral economic logic of commercialization—the bringing of a product to market—has come to have a direct and identifiable impact on all aspects of our shared social, cultural, and political life. For those involved in the industries behind the processes of commercialization, these developments remain a primarily neutral feature of the professions of advertising and marketing. For many others, commercialization is a far more significant and moral issue, and it is for this reason that the term is more popularly communicated with a distinctly pejorative tone.

For those of the professional advertising and marketing industries, of course, commercialization refers to a single stage in the development cycle of a new consumer product or service, typically arriving relatively late in the overall process. To simplify, the activities associated with this stage in the cycle tend to be concerned with the manufacture, distribution, and promotion of an identified new product or service (or at least a newly identified way of reinterpreting an existing product or service). Commercialization, [Page 211]understood in this singularly professional sense, is then essentially a technical process that involves a new product or service and the related market research, advertising, and promotional strategy that is undertaken to bring it to market—to have done all of the research and development possible to place before the freely choosing consumer a particular item that they both wish to, and are subsequently convinced need to, purchase (often regardless of whether there was anything resembling a mass clamor for such an item beforehand).

From the point of view of the professionals, therefore, commercialization necessarily entails a number of key assessments to realize the act of converting a potential consumer into an actual consumer, extracting monies from the wallets of as many freely choosing individuals as is possible, and that can involve the following areas of professional concern: legal (e.g., patenting, copyright); market (e.g., competition, potential share, possibilities for growth); technological (e.g., research and development strategies, computing and information technology support); financial (e.g., appropriate selling price, costs to bring product/service to market, cost to sustain development, potential for returns on investment); and associated risk (perception of threats to the success of the overall venture). As such, in this sense, commercialization can be deemed to be a largely neutral process that is carried out by professional advertisers and marketers, and one that is driven by the fundamentally quantitative aim of maximizing sales and capital profit through appropriate marketing and advertising strategies.

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