Consumer Engineering: A New technique for Prosperity.

SHELDON, Roy and Egmont Arens.

Item Number: 89764

New York: Harper and Brothers Publishing, 1932.

Rare first edition of the first book on “consumer engineering” and the creation of the birth of obsoletism and the ability to create demand by doing so. Octavo, original cloth. In near fine condition. Introduction by Earnest Elmo Calkins. Decorations by George Rupprecht. The book on the subject cited in most all books and articles on the history of the concept as being the book.

In Consumer Engineering, Sheldon and Arens wrote that business must accept the "world as it is," and then to see not threats but opportunities. In fact, there was a "new world" to be charted and explored. In the first years of the Great Depression, this view was intentionally upbeat. Problems could be turned to advantage; overproduction and under-consumption could be solved by knowing the needs and wishes of consumers, by good design and use of color, by predicting fashion, not fads, and by what is now known as "planned obsolescence." The works contains their classic statement: "Would any change in the goods or the habits of the people speed up their consumption? Can they be displaced by newer models? Can artificial obsolescence be created? Consumer engineering does not end until we can consume all we can make."