The following is excerpted from Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2010), written by Andrew Benett and Ann O’Reilly and drawing on findings from the Euro RSCG New Consumer study:

The long, wearisome decades of hyperconsumption shaped not just the way we think and feel but the very language we use. It is now customary to refer to human beings as consumers or even as brands. And an entire lexicon has been summoned into existence just to give verbal shape to our profligate excesses: big-box store, Black Friday (and now Cyber Monday), bling, door-buster, McMansion, self-storage, shopaholic, supersized, warehouse club.
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