In Britain many households receive daily deliveries of post, milk and newspaper, usually in time for breakfast. A milkman does a „milk round“, visiting a number of houses in an area. In towns, electrically operated „milk floats“ are used and other goods such as potatoes, eggs, fruit juice can also supplied by the milkman. There is a daily postal delivery to every house, however remote. In towns, older schoolchildren can earn pocket money by delivering newspapers (called „doing a paper round) before they go to school.
Older children and students also make money by baby-sitting. This and other services are often advertised on a display board in the window of a newsagent’s or other small shop.

Repairman, also called „odd job men“, electricians, gardeners, window cleaners, painters and decorators, plumbers, domestic cleaners (called „daily helps“) and child-minders (women who look after children during the day while the parents are at work) also often advertise their services in this way. Services are also advertised in the „classified ads“ section of local newspapers.
Many services can be ordered by telephone and a special telephone directory, the „Yellow Pages“; lists firms according to the services they provide. You can order a cooked meal to be delivered from a Chinese restaurant or a pizza restaurant. If you want to send a present to someone, you can arrange for chocolates, flowers, etc. to be delivered. Many of these delivery services use motorcycles.

Shops and offices in town centers provide services such as dry cleaning, shoe repairs, photocopying and the use of fax machines. In launderettes you can wash and dry clothes in coin-operated machines. The are estate agencies for buying and selling houses, letting agencies for finding rented accommodation and employment agencies for finding a job. Some employment agencies specialize in a particular kind of job, for example secretarial jobs.

Commercialism has a long, controversial history in the U.S. Some advertisements are cleverly designed to entertain and even shock us. Take, for example, the ad for Levi’s blue jeans using Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting in which God is giving life - and a pair of blue jeans – to the newly created Adam. Benetton has used “shock” ads such as a nun and a priest kissing, as well as portraits of prisoner sentenced to death. When images are difficult to forget, so are the products they represented.
“Jingles” are tunes created for commercials that stick in your ear and you hum the melody over and over, hopefully “hypnotizing” you into buying the products. One of the most successful in this sense are McDonald’s and Burger King, who have produced memorable tunes that keep people coming back for more.


The shops we attend every day are large self – serviced shops. When you buy (or more formally – purchase) something in a shop you usually pay for it outright or you buy on credit. Sometimes you may be offered a discount (f.e. if you buy a lot) or reduction on something. It is not usual to haggle about prices in our shops, as it is in a Turkish market). If we want to return something, which we have bought, to a shop, we may be given a refund (our money will be returned) provided you have a receipt. If we buy an electrical appliance we should ask about guarantee.

CONSUMER SOCIETY

A consumer society is a society in which materials goods are very important, and in which the consumers themselves are very important and have a lot of power.
People today seem to have more possessions and more comforts than they have ever had. They have washing machines, food processors, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners etc. to help with jobs that were once done by hand, and they have stereos, televisions, videos and computer games to help them enjoy their free time. These products have become very important to people too. Everybody dreams of owning their own car and you are very unusual if you don’t have at least one television set at home.

Many people work very hard for long weeks in order to have enough money, not just to buy the food and clothes needed by their family and to pay the bills, but to be able to afford other “luxury” goods to make their life easier or more enjoyable.
In the past, people would shop more often for staple foods such as fruit, vegetables, bread and meat. They would buy these in local shops in their town or village where they lived and carry them home in bags. Other things such as newspapers and magazines, cigarettes, sweets and milk could be bought even closer to home at the nearest corner shop. Today, many families have a big freezer at home and quite a few also have a microwave. Ready prepared meals such as pizzas, pies and many other dishes which can be taken out of freezer, heated up and ready to eat just a few minutes, are becoming more popular amongst people who don’t have time to cook. There is a growing trend for people to go shopping less often and to fill their cars with enough food to last all week, or in some cases, most of the month.