7 MODERN CONSUMPTION: Cacao in Modern Times: Consumption
Chocolate consumption by consumers changed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chocolate was globalized, and with new products came new ideas and associations for the time periods associated with them. Chocolate as a food instead of a drink became increasingly desirable because of consumerism, advertising, and branding.
One new idea about chocolate consumption was the democratization of chocolate. Chocolate was more widely available and inexpensive due to the globalization of chocolate around the world. As a non-essential food, chocolate was doing very well for itself as a desirable food and in great demand. Chocolate companies began to use advertising as a way to sell their products to consumers. However, to make chocolate as cheaply as possible, companies figured out ways to get cacao that were based on low-wage labor and not looking too closely at how chocolate is produced.
“First, they figured a way to reduce the price of chocolate by sourcing cacao from areas with low wages and no labor laws that could protect the workers. Second, they invested in more machinery that could increase the scale of production. Third, they diversified and started creating more products. However, all these considerations affected the supply side. In order to tackle the demand, chocolate companies relied on advertising.” (Lecture 7)
Advertising became a whole art in itself. Advertising was aggressive and focused on increasing sales for profit. Advertising reflected the attitudes and values of the people that the chocolate companies wanted to sell to, and so changed the idea of the product itself that started out as a drink and became a food. Advertisers came up with many different ideas about how to advertise - newspapers, posters, flyers, tradecards, etc. (Lecture 7)
Tradecards were collectible and popular and had desirable images on them that people enjoyed viewing and imagining that they could be the person in the image, and enjoy chocolate like they did. Trade cards could be collected and enjoyed for years afterward. Tradecards were available at various booths at world’s fairs, and became highly sought after.
“The term trade card encompasses a broad range of ephemeral material produced over several centuries. The earliest examples, printed on paper, simply stated the tradesman’s name and location, with reference to intersections.” (Westbrook, V. 183)
Later, trade cards were printed with lithography in color, (Westbrook, V. 183) and became an important means of advertising, as well as desirable collectibles. Even more important, at world’s fairs, chocolate exhibitors displayed their wares in unusual and stylish ways to attract more customers to buy their products.
“Many exhibitors presented their products in artful arrays suggesting plenitude and variety. Twenty exhibitors focused on candy production. Chocolate manufacturers created freestanding pavilions to exhibit their work.” (Westbrook, N. 199) Most of these exhibits offered samples to the public. “Free
tastings became a significant element in chocolate exhibits, hooking the public into its consumption.” (Lecture 7)
Chocolate also became an object of advertising to the different sexes. Advertising showed the different methods of sales pitches to the different genders. Ads that showed pretty women drinking or eating chocolate in pleasant circumstances appealed to both men and women. Ads that showed attractive men drinking or eating chocolate in pleasant circumstances also appealed to both men and women. However, there were also often sensual or sexual elements to the advertising, and it’s long been known that chocolate is considered an aphrodisiac. Military ads feature attractive men eating chocolate. Manufacturers found out that sex sells. And chocolate was often a precursor to love, and likely to inspire love. Although it may just be a pagan ritual of someone offering gifts to a goddess, or chocolate to a woman.
““Its reputation as an aphrodisiac goes back as far as the European conquest of Mexico.” Thus, by the start of the twentieth century, as historian Gail Cooper has argued, chocolate candy “as a marker of the special occasion was clearly seen in its importance to courtship. Men routinely bought chocolate for women they courted.” (Cooper 1998, 73). In this way, that box of chocolate bonbons was very much a part of what sociologist Eve Illouz sees as the intertwined processes of the romanticization of commodities and the commodification of romance. (Illouz 1997, 26).”
In Africa, there are farm collective chocolate brands that have begun using women farmers on the front of their packaging to challenge the views of women as sex objects and just presenting them as people who are business owners presenting their own products. This bodes well for changing the narrative of women around the world as just people, not as sex objects used to advertise the chocolate.
“...the Divine advertisements depict farmers as cosmopolitan consumers of luxury goods and owners of the chocolate company. By representing these Ghanaian women as glamorous business owners, the images invite viewers to see them as potent actors in transnational exchanges of cocoa and chocolate, and as beneficiaries of these exchanges…” (Leissle 121)
Chocolate consumption by consumers changed a lot during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the chocolate drink shifted over to chocolate confections. Chocolate’s globalization brought new products, new ideas, and new associations for the time periods associated. Chocolate became increasingly desirable because of consumerism, advertising, and branding, and this demonstrates the democratization of chocolate.
Bibliography
Hershey. “Hershey Report 2021.” Hershey. PDF. Hershey.com PDF handout.
Juarez-Dappe, Patricia. “History of Chocolate Class 429, Lecture 7.” California State University Northridge. Fall 2023. csun.edu.
Leissle, Kristy. “Cosmopolitan Cocoa Farmers: Refashioning Africa in Divine Chocolate Advertisements.” Journal of African Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 2012, pp. 121–39, https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2012.736194.
Nutter, Kathleen Banks. “From Romance to PMS: Images of Women and Chocolate in Twentieth Century America.” (Class PDF Handout). Chapter 9, p 199 - 121. LeBesco, Kathleen, and Peter Naccarato. Edible Ideologies: Representing Food and Meaning. 1st ed., State University of New York Press, 2008. <https://csu-un.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CALS_UNO/lj2n3v/cdi_globaltitleindex_catalog_271514422>
Westbrook, Nicholas. “Chapter 46: Chocolate at the World’s Fairs, 1851 - 1964.” Class PDF online. “History of Chocolate Class 429, Lecture 7. Fall 2023.” (from Grivetti, Louis., and Howard-Yana. Shapiro. Chocolate : History, Culture, and Heritage. Wiley, 2009).
Westbrook, Virginia. “Chapter 14: Role of Trade Cards in Marketing Chocolate in the Late 19th Century.” Class PDF online. “History of Chocolate Class 429, Lecture 7. Fall 2023.” (from Grivetti, Louis., and Howard-Yana. Shapiro. Chocolate : History, Culture, and Heritage. Wiley, 2009).
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