Is it happening? Is the ‘culture of consumption’ becoming an ever smaller element of our society, and are the jobs of many marketers in danger? We are told by the media that “real gems are too brash for the nineties” (Van der Post, 1993), that Cartier watches are more popular with leather, rather than with gold straps (Economist, 1992), and that western societies are becoming ‘post-materialist,’ placing less emphasis on material possessions and values (Inglehart, 1977). Is the nouveaux pauvre mask of the 1990s a result of the ‘mother of all recessions’ that economic downturn which marked the beginning of the decade? Or have the value systems of consumers finally been affected by the counterculture of the sixties, the consumption orgies of the eighties, and the famine and wars of the nineties?