Consumerism

"In many critical contexts, consumerism is used to describe the tendency of people to identify strongly with products or services they consume, especially those with commercial brand names and obvious status-enhancing appeal, e.g. an expensive automobile, expensive jewelry. A culture that is permeated by consumerism can be referred to as a consumer culture. Impulse buyers are quite different from shopaholics, who cannot resist spending money.

Opponents of consumerism argue that many luxuries and unnecessary consumer products are social signals that allow people to identify like-minded individuals through consumption and display of similar products.

...Some believe that relationships with a product or brand name are substitutes for the healthy human relationships lacking in dysfunctional modern societies and along with consumerism itself are part of the general process of social control and cultural hegemony in modern society." -- Wikipedia