The Consumer of Postmodern Ages
THE CONSUMER OF POSTMODERN AGES
Florin NECHITA, Ionela RUSU
S.C. SABMILLER S.A. Braşov
Abstract: The rapid change in the consumers behaviours has no equivalent in the past evolutions. It can be said that consumers of our times entered into the „hypermodernity” era. The main characteristics of the (post)modern consumers are: Sofistication, Experientiality, Resistance,Global and Local Oriented, Environment Conscious.
Key Words: hipermodernity, transumers, trysumers, „in-speriences”, thematic retail
The way and rate consumer changes nowadays has no paralel in the past. This change involves both the consumer himself and its attitudes, the environment (especially the technological one) and the consumer-environment connection.
The term of "postmodern" was coined in the end of the XX-th century, describing the historical changes of the time, when a whole lot of institutions keeping the individual emancipation at bay started disintegrating, leading thus to an increase in self-fulfillment and individual desire expression. Gilles Lipovetsky[1], one of the most original thinkers in social sciences, says we entered "hypermodernity", an age of hyperconsumption and hypermodern individuals.
Hyperconsumption is the consumption that absorbs and integrates more social life spheres and encourages consumption for personal pleasure, rather than for display of social status.
Hypermodernity is the society characterized by movement, fluidity and flexibility, further and further form the principles of modernity.
Hypermodern individual is pleasure and hedonism-oriented, but simultaneously bears the anxiety and tension deriving from a tradition-chained world, without faith and with an uncertain future. The slogan of the postmodern individual si "here and now".
The main characteristics of the (post)modern consumers are: Sofistication, Experientiality, Resistance,Global and Local Oriented in the same time, Environment Conscious.
Consumer sophistication can be explained by:
- higher education
- increased income
- more spare time, thus more time for information and acquisition
- important changes in consumer lifestyle
- changes in consumer attitudes
Consumer sophistication explaines the changes in the needs various products and services satisfy. Take cars and mobile phones, for example. Both started as better replacements of their predecessors, the charriot, respectively the land phone lines, later evolving into products that greately satisfy many other needs. Both cars and cell phones can be seen as social technologies that unite people, create freedom and take in different lifestyles. In both cases, features available at start on luxury/premium models only became later available to the masses. The consumers look for various features that address their main needs or lifestyles[2] (family, sport, urban cars, SUV's, respectively business cell phones, with camera, with FM radio, with GPS, ultraslim etc).
Also, in support of the sophistication some consumer classes show, there classes previously ignored by marketers due to their low purchase-influencing power: senior citizens, low-income workers, children. Nowadays, even women's magazines are looking into targeting the age 50+ since, in Europe, this class will posess 50 to 60 per cent of all income[3]. A strategy targeting these consumers must take into account that[4]: senior citizens (age 50+) are very optimistic abou their life and future, are as interested in brands like any other consumer, the communication should be as relevant and as pleasant as for any other consumer categories, and seniors tend to see themselves 10 years younger.
Experiences is offered to the consumer, and also:
- power and authority - the buyer plays a game of power with the salespeople and might feel superior, compared to them
- the rush, obtained by the newest products on the market.
Nowadays, consumption turned to satisfying hedonistic needs, consumers looking for experiences of status, pleasure, fulfillment, entertainment and fun, etc.
The buying/shopping experience:
Anne Saunders, senior vicepresident marketing with Starbucks[5], says: „One of the challenges for us concerns how „experential” our interactions are. People clearly come to Starbucks to get a great cup of coffe, but they also come for the feeling and the community part of what we provide”.
The retail centers became "retail entertainment centers". Many shops create fantasy environments that carry shoppers into imaginary worlds or give a whole lot of unusual stimuli[6]. This strategy is called retail theming and uses four techniques to create the themes:
- landscapes associated with nature, land, wildlife or the human body (e.g. Macromall in Brasov)
- associations with ither well-known places (The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas)
- cyberspace - creating strong online virtual communities
- mindscapes - e.g. Seibu, Tokyo, where consumer enter first floor as greenhorns, only to get out the last floor as expert shoppers.
More, the virtual space offers many possibilities to live new experiences, that improve or ease up consumption. In Second Life, people can create avatars (on-line extentions of their own real egos) to buy, sell and build in a virtual reality that sometimes crosses the real world[7].
Such consumers might also be defined as transumers, trysumers or „in-speriences".
Consumers with a transitional lifestyle(transumers)[8]are the consmers looking for entertainment, fun, discovery, fight with boredom, try out transitional lifestyles, free from the bonds created by earthly posessions.
The transumer's lifestyle comprises renting of goods and services, in order to:
- avoid problems - more you have, more you fear theft, fixings, loss, moral decay;
- the best, the newest - since product cycles are ever shorter, renting is a way to enjoy the best and the newest
- multiple experiences - limited budgets can accomodate many experinces by renting instead of posessing
- showing a better social status than what reality might allow.
Even without renting, large websites like eBay offer consumers the possibility to buy and sell quicker and easier. The society turns from an accumulation one in a limited-posession one, or in a so calledauction culture[9]..
- surprise - transumers want more than freedom, they look for surprises, moving always from a passing experince to another.
- relation with space - in 1990, sociologist Ray Oldenburg described the refuge spaces where people would seek shelter from bosses' or families' chains and where they could, at least temporarily, forget pains and sadnesses. This refuge space (or "the third space") was included among themes and communication campains by Starbucks or PlayStation 2[10].
Trysumers[11] are the consumers who are free of conventions and discomforts, immune to advertising and who enjoy full access to information and try new products, new tastes, new authors, new destinations, anything new. The reasons for such a behaviour are:
- the world of plenty, where niches turn into mass markets
- consumers have a lot of experience and are able to quickly get over possible dissapointments and try all new products and services
- trial is encouraged not only by higher income, but also by the incredibly low price for many products and services
- low risk of trial for new destinations with GPS systems. These systems doubled sales between 2005 and 2006 and look like the new stars for the near future.
In-sperience consumers[12]are those who, in a society dominated by public space experiences, wish for their best ones to come into their domestic space. They can turn their experinces into in-speriences, by building special spaces or rooms at home, like fitness and gym rooms, basketball miniturfs, pools, saunas, home theaters etc. A whole new range of products and services are developed in close relation with this trend.
Involved in the environment issues
This trait of the modern consumer is just part of a whole attitude: political involvement. The trends developed lately are:
- attention to the environment, energy, pollution, global warming;
- more recycling
- more social responsibility for the corporations
In fact, corporations adopting social responsibilities are a direct consequence of those consumers, as he himself turnes into a soclally responsible consumer. "Consumers look for value, but now they care more than ever aboutthe way clothes or food are produced" says Stuart Rose, CEO Marks&Spencer. We can talk of "responsible trade", as U2 leader Bono did by launching Product Red. Product Red is a new way of doing business, with giants like Motorola, Emporio Armani, Gap, American Express having an alternate Red version of their products. The Red label bears witness to a part of the cost being donated to the Global Fund, world's numer one foundation fighting malaria, TBC and AIDS.[13]
- more involvment in the community wellfare and as social activists
- the growth of organic products market, now at 30+ bn $. "This market was created by consumers who voted with thei money" says Michael Pollan, author, „The Omnivore's Dilemma”[14]. Since hypermarkets do not satisfy this demand yet, there are specialized alternative networks. Consumers will continue to prefer natural lifestyles and organic products, and big chains will have to increase their choice on this field.
Westernization/globalization and localization are two opposite features characterizing the behaviour of the present-day consumer, as well as of the organizations providing goods or services.
Westernization/globalization means adopting a lifestyle based on western values for the consumers in countries less developped. This process is based upon:
- increased expectations of large segments of the population
- modern trade increase and penetration of global brands on local markets
- multiculturalism and increased access to cultural diversity
- access to worldwide communication infrastructure
- increase in international flow of business and tourism
- immigration and links of immigrants with origin countries
- opular culture widespread by TV and the Internet
- world sporting events (World Soccer Cup or Olympic Games)
- appearance of a set of universal values.
We can talk about similr consumption behaviours worldwide. Though the flow of adopting products and customs is both-ways, the West still is a net exporter of popular culture. Western symbols (images, words, products) are spread all around the world, and the Western lifestyle, and particularly the English language, have been the icon of modernization/sophistication for decades.
More and more, globalization equalizes americanization and the american external politics, making many countries (muslim ones for sure) to undergo consumer behavioral changes up to boycotting american products.
Localization or consumer preference for local products and services is a trend opposite to westernization/globalization. This has the following root causes:
- low prices and good quality of local products (mainly foodstuff), combined with the perception that imported goods are low-qualitry versions of the products in the West.
Resistance to producers.
As companies, and especially their marketing services, use war-like terms as "targets", "campaigns", "winning market share" a.s.o., it is only normal for consumers to fight back in this "war".
The ever-increasing resistance consumers show comes mainly from the POWER they have. This power has its roots in the ease of getting the information, and on the battlefield of the free market prices become transparent and consumers started already liquidating the tradition allies of the producers, the middlemen, by disintermediation.
More than that, consumers now have a whole range of avoiding messages from producers, be they sent by Internet or by taping favorite show without commercials.
What can producers do?
- adapt messages to the new reality (e.g. a static logo shows clearly even on Fast Forward)
- follow their consumers wherever they are (Internet advertising, product placement in TV shows, posters in shopping areas)
- follow the real targets; the Interner allows buying behaviour analysis, and new, customized messages can be constructed (e.g. Amazon.com)
- do not consider the alternative info spaces (blogs, RSS etc) as uncontrolled information spreading spaces, but turn these into sources of more credible, higher impact data sources. Here, where the message about brands is created by the very consumers, the brands become owned by the users, and those in turn get to be "inspirational consumers".[15]
- offer goods/services easy to understand and use (like "sense and simplicity" by Philips).
BIBLIOGRAFY
1. Davis M., Cause-related consumerism,
2. King E. B., Engaging the Aging: Marketing to Europe’s Seniors,
3. Lipovetsky G., Charles S., Hypermodern Times
4. Manning-Schaeffel V., Consumers check out organic options,
5. Nissanoff D., FutureShop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get theThings We Really Want, The Penguin Press
6. Solomon M. R., Barmossy G., Askegaard S, Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective
7. Crowned at last, The Economist, 2nd April 2005
8. Doing business in the virtual world,
9. House of Starbucks, The Hub, nov/dec 2005
10. Over 50 but not over the hill,
11. Phones are the new cars, The Economist, 2nd December 2006
12. Trillion-dollar kids, The Economist, 2nd December 2006
13. Voting with your trolley, The Economist, 9th December 2006
14.
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[1] Lipovetsky G., Charles S., Hypermodern Times
[2] Phones are the new cars, The Economist, 2 decembrie 2006, pag 14
[3] King E. B., Engaging the Aging: Marketing to Europe’s Seniors,
[4] Over 50 but not over the hill,
[5] House of Starbucks, The Hub, nov/dec 2005
[6]Solomon M. R., Barmossy G., Askegaard S, Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective, pag. 321
[7] Doing business in the virtual world,
[8]
[9] Nissanoff D., FutureShop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get theThings We Really Want, The Penguin Press
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[13]Davis M., Cause-related consumerism,
[14] Voting with your trolley, The Economist, December 9th, 2006, pag. 71
[15] Crowned at last, The Economist, 2nd April 2005, pag.46