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• 1 media/CGE Mixer, Knife Attachment. Unknown printed source.png 2025-03-14T13:51:01-04:00 Consumption 34 A glimpse into the world in which this mixer lived image_header 2025-03-28T01:15:01-04:00

  This 1966 gift mixer set by C.G.E. includes mixer model M7A. Most of the information found online regards mixer model M47. As mentioned previously, the product designs are similar, and will be referred to at times as “the mixer”.

  
  Customer Relations
  
  C.G.E. built strong relations with their customers through confidence in their product’s performance, using marketing tone that appeals to their expected contemporary consumer of the time (women) and assured warranties. The Barrie News highlights C.G.E.’s customer relations, even stating that defective G.E. products were mailed and received on occasion at C.G.E.’s small appliance Barrie plant decades after it closed (McInroy 2019). Customers attached the company to the building, remembering C.G.E.’s presence in their neighbourhood. Today, the factory has been renovated into an over 170 lease-able unit, preserving its place in the city as a historical location and an opportunity for business boom (McInroy 2019). 

  
  Economics and Affordability

  Indication of the mixer’s performance or advertising on the market after 1965 into the late 1970s was searched for in digital and in-person archives. Majority of the archival matter that was found includes catalogues of C.G.E.’s products from Fred Moffatt’s fonds at York University, and archived newspapers via Newspaper.com. 

  Asking the question of who could have afforded this domestic appliance has led us to a glimpse of the consumer’s persona. Most of the advertisements include just the product against a coloured background, although, the ones that do include a model are women of the Western British culture. It can be assumed, then, that this product was positioned to be affordable by women of the middle class. The purchase price for mixers of this product range were around $15 in the 1960s, which is equivalent to $144.32 today (Canada Inflation Calculator n.d.).
   

  
  It appears that C.G.E. experienced financial highs and lows in the late 1960s as a result of fluctuations in Canada’s economy. Montreal Star reported in 1966 that C.G.E. “sold a record volume of goods and services in domestic and export markets in 1965.” In 1967, C.G.E.’s net earnings were down 21%, citing strikes in Ontario and Quebec and rising material costs as contributors (Montreal Star). A year prior, C.G.E. announced in The Edmonton Journal that “selective price changes in small appliances” will be made, with “the housewares marketing division” stating that “certain items” will have “some price adjustments, but added that there will be no general increase,” (1967). Inflated costs for this mixer were not found.
  
  
  
  The Great Servant
  
  In the 1920’s when women gained the right to vote in the USA and Canada, GE began to use marketing language that encouraged a woman’s access to and investment in new technology that will support her work in her “workshop”, equalizing any discrepancy between the value of a man or woman’s “work.” In this advertisement from the 1920s, GE posed electricity as a “great servant” that will enable women “to make her workshop the equal of her man’s”, so that women can save time and energy from doing all of her tasks by hand. Also noted on this ad is GE’s pledge to work “side by side” their partnering companies to “help lift drudgery [(tedious or unpleasant work)] from the shoulders of women as well as men.”
  
  
  Assuming the Managerial Role
  
  Designing products to relieve stress, provide opportunities for joy, and to support us in conserving time are strategies that seem reflective of the emotional impact on society after WWII. Although, cultural theorists and historians look at this time period through a more grim lens: consumerism, where personal consumption became “one of the most powerful social and economic forces” (Broad, 2013).
  
  Broad tells that “when the war erupted in September 1939, hardly anyone called on Canadians to make material sacrifice, because hardly anyone believed that such sacrifice would be necessary” (2013, 12).
  
  Then, as the traditional gender roles of masculine industrial labour and feminine domesticity began to blur, “the conception of women as wives, mothers, homemakers, and caregivers” persisted throughout the war as “society’s bulwark” and “the foundation of the country’s moral and economic defence against Nazi fascism,” (17). Middle-class women became the “managers of household consumption” and were deemed the best fit to decide “what money is going for this or that” (17).
  
  Figure 3 is a “Marketing” feature in Chatelaine’s September 1939 issue that preserves this shift in society’s expectations of a woman, referring to the bride as a “Purchasing Agent” and marriage as a “lifetime career in the business of homemaking.” Further propaganda included the narrative of consumerism being a “ready-made ‘war job’ for millions of women, one that did not ignite anxieties about gender roles in the way that participation in the industrial workforce or the armed forces was wont to do,” (Broad, 19). 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This direction of narratives marketed to women carried on during the 1950s-1960s. The follow advertisements side-by-side are examples of this communication to different target audience personas that surround women, the preferred consumer of kitchen and self-care appliances. The language of the Hudson Bay advertisement emphasizes “time saving”, while the second advertisement, showing a women multitasking, is directed to someone (most likely, her husband) who would buy the product for her, and the third advertisement is themed for mother’s day, promoting C.G.E.’s small appliances as gifts for the occasion.
  
   
• 1 2025-03-28T01:16:18-04:00 The Purchasing Agent's Great Servant 20 plain 7937 2025-04-08T10:39:45-04:00
  The Great Servant
  
  In the 1920’s when women gained the right to vote in the USA and Canada, GE began to use marketing language that encouraged a woman’s access to and investment in new technology that will support her work in her “workshop”, equalizing any discrepancy between the value of a man or woman’s “work.” In this advertisement from the 1920s, GE posed electricity as a “great servant” that will enable women “to make her workshop the equal of her man’s”, so that women can save time and energy from doing all of her tasks by hand. Also noted on this ad is GE’s pledge to work “side by side” their partnering companies to “help lift drudgery [(tedious or unpleasant work)] from the shoulders of women as well as men.”
  
  
  Assuming the Managerial Role
  
  Designing products to relieve stress, provide opportunities for joy, and to support us in conserving time are strategies that seem reflective of the emotional impact on society after WWII. Although, cultural theorists and historians look at this time period through a more grim lens: consumerism, where personal consumption became “one of the most powerful social and economic forces” (Broad, 2013).
  
  Broad tells that “when the war erupted in September 1939, hardly anyone called on Canadians to make material sacrifice, because hardly anyone believed that such sacrifice would be necessary” (2013, 12).
  
  Then, as the traditional gender roles of masculine industrial labour and feminine domesticity began to blur, “the conception of women as wives, mothers, homemakers, and caregivers” persisted throughout the war as “society’s bulwark” and “the foundation of the country’s moral and economic defence against Nazi fascism,” (17). Middle-class women became the “managers of household consumption” and were deemed the best fit to decide “what money is going for this or that” (17).
  
  The following is a “Marketing” feature in Chatelaine’s September 1939 issue that preserves this shift in society’s expectations of a woman, referring to the bride as a “Purchasing Agent” and marriage as a “lifetime career in the business of homemaking.” Further propaganda included the narrative of consumerism being a “ready-made ‘war job’ for millions of women, one that did not ignite anxieties about gender roles in the way that participation in the industrial workforce or the armed forces was wont to do,” (Broad, 19). 
  
  
  
  
  This direction of narratives marketed to women carried on during the 1950s-1960s. The following advertisements side-by-side are examples of this communication to different target audience personas that surround women, the preferred consumer of kitchen and self-care appliances. The language of the Hudson Bay advertisement emphasizes “time saving”, while the second advertisement, showing a women multitasking, is directed to someone (most likely, her husband) who would buy the product for her, and the third advertisement is themed for mother’s day, promoting C.G.E.’s small appliances as gifts for the occasion.