Already well-blogged column from Virginia Postrel on the problem with the current American boom: they're buying experiences, not products. Take our expectations of a restaurant meal:
More and more of their value comes not from the nutrition and dishwashing services - function - but from the experience the restaurant provides. We don't go out to eat just to avoid cooking. We go to enjoy different cuisines in pleasant environments.Hmm. Almost no consciousness in this consumerist paen about the status of those who provide the quality experiences (other than an economic view). So many times I've been asked, 'but who will flip the burgers in a play society?' You'll flip your own, comes the reply, particularly if you have a regulation of working hours that allows you to attend to your own nourishment . Or you'll enjoy them from someone who wants to take gastronomic care and give extraordinary service, rather than the sub-robotic assembly of diseased crap (SuperSizeMe!) The Slow Foodies - and their theorist, Carl Honore - are onto something here. It's another reclamation of the right to order our time, space and materials. As Will Hutton says, we players, idlers and slow-coaches might well be in the ascendancy...For successful restaurants, aesthetics is no longer an afterthought. Customers are paying for memories, not just fuel. What's true for restaurants is true across the economy. New economic value increasingly comes from experiences.
Americans have not stopped buying stuff, of course. (Indeed, there's a whole industry devoted to organizing our pantry-like closets.) But the marginal value of tangibles versus intangibles has shifted. That many manufactured goods are also getting cheaper only intensifies the trend.
Products as well as services increasingly distinguish themselves through aesthetics, adding emotional value to practical use. This trend confounds those who equate "quality" with function. Hence a recent Dilbert comic strip satirizes a product designer who declares: "Quality is yesterday's news. Today we focus on the emotional impact of the product."
In fact, the trend toward emotional value is exactly what psychological research would predict. Particularly as incomes rise, people find that additional experiences give them more pleasure than additional possessions.
(You want numbers for all this? Try the New Economics Foundation's well-being website. They're launching 'a well-being manifesto - for a flourishing society' at the coming Labour Party conference.)
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