WHAT'S THE STORY
The Future
THERE ARE (NO SIMPLE) ANSWERS!
Socio-political debates are impacting consumer behaviour more than ever. Relationship status of industry, trade and consumers: It’s complicated. Is it, though? An opinion piece by Stephan Huber
O
h, how easy everything used to be. The producers produced, the retailers retailed (or at least sold), and the consumers consumed. It all happened in that order, always. A straight one-way process. Today’s consumer society, however, is an extremely complex and volatile network. It is influenced by increasingly diverse interactions between individual market participants on the one hand, and confronted with great social challenges (climate change, free trade, automation and digitisation of labour, etc.) on the other. For instance, a completely new type of moral debate is bound to have a much stronger impact on consumer behaviour than we can imagine today – and much stronger than many would like to admit. We are, in fact, already in the thick of this debate. RD Precht, in his capacity as the popular-philosophical all-purpose weapon, calls for restrictions in the defence of freedom. Unfortunately, he is not entirely wrong. At the same time, the potential for shame seems endless. Flygskam? Old hat! The current list is quite long: diesel shame, steak shame, and – the latest addition – streaming shame. Let’s not forget “I want a 1 Euro t-shirt” shame. Here is the problem, though. Nowhere is the gap between theory and practice more pronounced than in individual consumer
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style in progress
behaviour. People are flying more than ever, SUV registration figures are soaring, and streaming a few movies will not kill any glaciers in Iceland. Increased prices would be effective. However, the “de-democratisation” of air travel, or even of the schnitzel, would call the flag bearers of social justice onto the scene. As you can tell, we are segueing from one moral debate into the next. All this seems more complicated than any relationship status. (Facebook shame!) Who will buy what, when, how, where, and why? The good news is that, if you can offer a convincing answer to the question of why, you can actually tick off all the other questions. Simply perform a self-assessment: Why? Because I need it! Why? Because I want it! Why? Because it makes me happy, honestly! Why? Because it is cheap… I mean, because… yes, because it is cheap! And so on… So, all other questions are indeed enqueued. There is, however, no offthe-peg answer as to why, especially in times of increasingly heterogenous and particulate target groups. If I have briefly raised your hope for a simple answer, I am truly sorry. The non-existence of such a simple answer is not limited to politics. It might well be, however, that you find the inspiration for your indivi dual – and ultimately not so compli cated – answer within the pages of style in progress.
