Why consumer choice is not what it seems
Degrees of freedom
The saying “less is more”, which originated in modernist design, has great sway in some areas of life. It has become a mantra of leading brands and minimalist lifestyle advice. Yet apparently capitalism at large didn’t get the memo.
Flow: a customer journey?
I recently bought a new pair of running shoes. My previous pair hit their mileage limit some time ago and, since they can no longer offer the active cushioning that my tricky knee requires, have been graciously reassigned. I was keen to acquire a new pair that were as similar as possible.
At first, setbacks. An online search revealed that my shoes were now out of date. I was presented with two newer versions from the range alongside three other types of shoe by the same brand, each available with variations and customisations. I slogged through tabs on my browser, pushing the drop-down list of other brand names to the back of my mind. Meanwhile, I fretfully checked and compared the postage and returns policies at different outlets and the manufacturer’s website.
I’m happy with the pair I bought. Yet I can’t help but wonder why, with today’s access to such sophisticated tech, the shopping experience can still be such a gauntlet. The variety on offer is often overwhelming and the shortcuts provided seem feeble. The continual release of new products renders old ones obsolete after only a couple of years.
Undergraduates in economics are taught neat algebra to show why profit-seeking businesses differentiate their products, based on the premise that consumers buy whatever will optimise their happiness (‘utility’). Years after my own student days, I see it differently. How can we account for the way even just participating in the market affects our wellbeing?
Diving into the psychology of the consumer experience turns up contradictions. Amy Isham and colleagues have argued that achieving flow (defined as “total immersion in an activity”) is not only good for people’s wellbeing but also generally doesn’t require them to buy much stuff. In fact, the researchers find that thinking in terms of materialistic values seems to block people from achieving flow in the first place. However, people who experience flow while they shop are more likely to buy – a phenomenon which marketing professionals have tried to engineer.
Our total absorption in the selection of goods and services is commercially valuable. Friction is bad for business.
Even if flow-oriented design hasn’t yet reached many online stores, clearly the most successful corporations are moving to exploit these dynamics. Commercial success might then look like coaxing consumers to the marketplace and facilitating their time there, while doing as little as possible to to remind them that they are, in fact, consumers.
Such tactics offer a kind of choice that is superficial at best. How and whether we participate at all are less and less in question. We are free to choose only within certain parameters.
Be the product you want to see in the world
Competition for attention and engagement is the default operating mode of today’s economy. Social media platforms are the primary battleground; it is well known that the core business of most relies on commercial advertising. Consider that these networks led to the genesis of the term FOMO.
In her excellent book How to Do Nothing, author and artist
joins the dots between increasing hours spent on social media, a culture obsessed with ‘productivity’, and the idea that everyone can (or even should) be an entrepreneur. Closely related is the concept of the ‘personal brand’. If each person is a brand, they need the right equipment, designs, and other sensory tools to communicate their offer in the market, just as corporations do.Many available options are simply the result of social norms that lead us to feel and act in certain ways. In an early memory on this theme, I am standing in the toothpaste aisle of a supermarket. My brain scrambles at the notion of so many possible outcomes for my oral health. What do I lose, and what do I gain, if I opt for ‘triple action’ and settle for regular (instead of ‘advanced’) whitening?
A journal article on toothpaste notes: “the complex formulations of modern toothpastes and mouthwashes makes them one of the most sophisticated pharmaceutical products on the market today. The demands of the consumer coupled with the complexity of the oral cavity make it one of the most challenging development processes” (my emphasis). It goes on to elaborate that the tastes of ‘the consumer’ include whitening teeth and removing stains.
In
’s words at The Review of Beauty, “what we call self is often appearance, and what we call optimization is often an unrealistic and oppressive ideal of perfection that is not useful to the project of human flourishing.”In the same way as cosmetics, endless fast fashion lines and the microscopic nuances of consumer tech products invite us to imagine an optimised version of ourselves. A perfect life awaits, where our internal troubles melt away, once we find the external projection that suits us – and our brand – just right.
Remembering
The first link between hyper-choice in commerce and our relationship with Earth is in where we direct our attention. As the panoply of things to stream or order engulfs our lives, we are less connected with our physical surroundings. (Steps towards a virtual metaverse threaten to continue this trend. To be clear, I do believe there can be radical and emancipatory uses of emergent technologies, but they are not likely to come from the strongholds of surveillance capitalism. A theme for another post.)
As if to describe capitalism’s ecological problem, Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, writes in his memoir ShoeDog that “the art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting… You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.” A world full of entrepreneurs with personal brands has a very short memory.
By contrast, Odell’s invitation to “do nothing” is not exactly that. It is a plea to remember where we are and to truly be here; to connect with what makes this world real, vital, and precious. Only by connecting can we care, and only by caring deeply can we protect. Many actions can follow. Let’s break free from the reductive idea of sustainable behaviour that only centres what we buy (as important as that can be).
The second link lies in the quality and quantity of the things we consume. Food is a crucial example: supermarkets, industrial processes, and imports mean that our diets are no longer in step with the seasons or tied to the land around us. The consequences are harmful for our bodies as well as for the planet. Meanwhile, raw materials – including those used to build the infrastructure of the digital economy – are consumed at an ever greater rate. “Less is more” has become a call to action from advocates of degrowth.
Here is another way that modern commerce and (most) social media platforms are two sides of the same coin: they both extract things – resources, experiences – from their context. As I have written before, societies are now staggeringly interdependent due to the active trade routes that have made this explosion of choice possible. These bonds are especially fragile in a disrupted climate and environment.
Relying on the things we can own or consume is therefore not a resilient strategy for wellbeing in the era of planetary change. Experiences and relationships that allow us to access a state of flow, or just to be present with ourselves and the things around us, are a smarter bet. In this way, any form of action that challenges the cycle of buying, discarding, and extracting helps to change the rules of the game. That is the most important choice we have.
Where to go next
If you’re struggling from feeling like you’re bound to social media, find support with some of these tips from Calm. Perhaps try 10 long, deep breaths to return to your body and to the physical space you are in, at any time.
For a shorter rendition of How to Do Nothing, check out Odell’s Talk at Google (of all places). Another great summary is Christine Sweeney’s concise review over at LSE’s blog.
Listen to the podcast series CEREAL from the Farmerama team to learn why bread is a microcosm of the bait-and-switch that modern capitalism has achieved. In the words of one interviewee, despite the “myth that we have freedom of choice”, major retailers – in this context, supermarkets in the UK – are “actually providing us with a very one-dimensional offer”. Get inspired by the movement of small, local producers working to improve the public’s diet and relationship with the land.
Finding equilibrium for this publication and my freelance work hasn’t been easy lately. Now I’m hoping to expand its horizons by offering a monthly essay, interview, or compilation. Thank you for sticking with me through this learning process.
“What do I lose, and what do I gain, if I opt for ‘triple action’ and settle for regular (instead of ‘advanced’) whitening?” This is positively POETIC