enoughness | Hinesight

Values shift to consuming less

March 11, 2013 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

A key theme of ConsumerShift is that the emergence of postmodern and integral values would lead to less emphasis on material goods consumption. It is perhaps best captured by the theme of “enoughness,” in which people feel their lives are getting out of control, and they want to take back that control and set limits. If you’re wondering what this looks like in “real life,” take a look at this New York Times piece on “Living with Less. A Lot Less.”

It tells the story of an entrepreneur who strikes it rich and finds himself being more or less sucked into a consumptive lifestyle. Interestingly, the story shows how so much of our consumption is based on an expectation that it is appropriate to where one is in their journey, e.g., strike it rich = consume as one with money and status “should” consume.

Our entrepreneur is vaguely discomforted by this slide into high consumption and it takes a romantic relationship to snap him out of it, and rethink his priorities. In ConsumerShift, it’s noted how it often takes some sort of crisis or change in life conditions to provoke a rethinking. In the case here, the author downsizes his lifestyle and turns his entrepreneurial efforts to causes such as treehugger.com. Many of you will recognize this “make a difference” turn and not he’s shift into Integral values. A really nice illustration of some of the key ideas we’ve been talking about here! Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumption, enoughness, integral, postmodern, values

Values and consumption

October 2, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

Saw a piece “European Automakers Face Diminished Future” and checked it out to see if there might be a “values” connection. Europe in general — and Northern Europe in particular — is at the leading edge of the values shifts outlined in “ConsumerShift.” The question we might ask is whether it is just an industry slump, or is some larger change afoot? The article notes upfront that: “….it is dawning on industry executives that it could be years before sales return to the levels seen in 2007….”

The piece suggests no easy solutions – it observes some grumbling about the effects of the European debt crisis. Certainly the debt crisis is a factor, but is that it? I don’t think so. In a previous post, Changing Values and “Enoughness” Suggest Economic Stimulus Won’t Work, I suggested that US efforts to stimulate consumption were missing the trend toward consuming less. The values shifts have led enough people to shift their consumption patterns such that they won’t be “stimulated” back to the old ways. I suspect a similar shift at play in Europe, where one could argue they’ve already “been there” in terms of less “consumptive” lifestyles.

So, is at all doom and gloom then for the European automakers? No, but an adjustment is ahead. A few years back when I was with Innovaro (formerly Social Technologies), we had a day-long consortium meeting on the “Soft Path.” Our goal was, among other things, to paint a picture of a future society where consumption was less central, and to have our clients explore what it meant for their businesses – with many of them built around an assumption of continued growth in consumption. The message of the meeting is that while this future is different, and will certainly influence business models, it is not so “scary” if one prepares.

And let’s not forget that this less-consumption trend is largely an affluent-country phenomenon. The piece goes on to note, for instance, that: “Despite the dismal outlook for Europe, auto executives said they remained optimistic about the car industry globally. Sales continue to rise in countries like Brazil and Russia, offsetting Europe to some extent.” The modern values of the emerging markets are in the “growth is good” phase and their huge populations and can more than offset the decline in the affluent nations.

As is so often the case, the future is really not scary, it’s different! Andy Hines.

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumers, consumption, debt crisis, enoughness, europe, soft path, values

Seven Grand Challenges for Consumer Products Companies for the Next Decade

September 13, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

Had to pull together some thoughts recently on what ConsumerShift implied for consumer products companies. Here’s the outline.

Authenticity: needs to permeate the entire culture of organizations from the executive leadership all the way down to ingredients and processes used
Connection: especially for larger organizations, how to balance the advantages of [large] scale with the need for greater participating at the individual community level; one of the interesting potential technology enablers of this could be 3D printing for local production
Anti-consumerism: the term consumer implies treating people as statistics or data point, which is a huge turn-off; people recognize they must consume, but don’t see that as defining who they are; want to be treated as individuals
Self-expression: dealing with the Long Tail as the new norm — markets of one, which implies a need for providing real input for customers; breaking down the “us and them” distinction
Enoughness – selling less stuff, but opportunities for higher-value add based on relationship building and the story or credentials of the offering, e.g., strong sustainability credentials, unique local origins, etc.
Reconciling materialism & anti-materialism – the “anti-materialism” values are strongest in affluent countries with comparatively small and stable populations in comparison to emerging markets with materialist values and large and growing populations. Much different strategic approaches required.
Opportunity to make a difference: attracting talent will be increasingly challenging – with top talent in high demand – and may boil down to organization who can provide the opportunity to “make a difference” having the advantage. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: anti-consumerism, authenticity, connection, consumer understanding, Consumershift, enoughness, long tail, values

Enoughness and the Future of Communications Research

September 8, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

UH Certificate in Strategic Foresight alum Robert Moran, now a quoted me around “enoughness” in his piece “The Future of Communications Research for PR Week. Bob is now a partner at Brunswick Group, where he leads the insights function for the Americas. Alas, a subscription is required to read the full article. The gist of my contribution is that “enoughness” describes a new, post-crash consumer ethos with an edge, as consumers have had enough of the consumer rat-race and “corpspeak” and now they want simplicity. I’ve described enoughness as one of the five key changes in the emerging consumer landscape. I borrowed the term from my friend and colleague Marcus Barber at Looking Up, Feeling Good. He’s done great work on the future of values and readers of this blog are sure to find his work of great interest. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Media, Values Tagged With: Bob Moran, Brunswick Group, certificate in strategic foresight, communications research, enoughness, future, Looking Up Feeling Good, Marcus Barber, PR Weekly, values

Some support for ethical consumption

September 1, 2012 by Andy Hines 1 Comment

My friend and colleague Christopher Kent of the Foresight Alliance pointed me to a post by the GfK Roper Consulting global trend of ‘Considered Consumption’, which shows that today a staggering 79% of consumers agree that they only “buy products and services that appeal to their beliefs, values or ideals.” ConsumerShift calls the trend “ethical consumption” (same difference). It is a central feature of the “consumershift” toward lifestyles based less on material goods consumption. My colleagues and I had been estimating somewhere around 20% of consumers willing to spend in support of their values. Roper is reporting a big jump that may reflect ideal to , a greater extent than reality, but nonetheless it still suggests a growing phenomenon.

Those interested in digging a little deeper might visit LOHAS research which suggests a $290Billion market for offerings around lifestyles of health and sustainability. They find for instance, that consumers have indeed cut their consumption (fits with enoughness driven by the Great Recession) but at the same time “there are some very bright spots within the sustainability realm, one of which is that consumers are more active in the LOHAS space than ever before.” Nice to see other sources supporting ConsumerShift’s ideas. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, consumption, enoughness, ethical consumption, LOHAS, values

Five Key Changes in the Future Consumer Landscape: #5 Enoughness

August 31, 2012 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

ConsumerShift identifies the changing consumer values and external trends that are remaking the consumer landscape. Five key themes form the core of these changes, making “A CASE” for change. Fifth, is “E”: Enoughness.

Think of enoughness as voluntary simplicity with a bit of an edge to it. Whereas voluntary simplicity suggested a benevolent, altruistic adoption of a simpler lifestyle, enoughness gets to a similar end point, but only partly from choice, as necessity in the form of the Great Recession is mixed into the equation. The recession has forced people to confront their consumption patterns.

People are accepting and even embracing a need limits—“maybe growth can’t continue forever?” There is a sense of “having enough” or being fed up with the status quo. It goes beyond material goods to the real precious resource of the next decade: time! People feel their lives are getting out of control, and they want to take back that control and set limits. The recession has provided the “perfect” opportunity to experiment with doing with less—stuff and activities. It may turn out in hindsight, that this is the most impactful of the five thematic changes in the consumer landscape. Organizations counting on population growth and a continued desire for “more” to meet their growth numbers are going to lose on both counts in the emerging consumer landscape. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, enoughness, values

Changing Values and “Enoughness” Suggest Economic Stimulus Won’t Work

August 31, 2012 by Andy Hines 1 Comment

Economic stimulus is in the news a lot. A recent New York Times piece noted that: “Since the economy began to falter in 2007, Congress has passed what amounts to three stimulus bills — a bipartisan $158 billion package of tax cuts signed by President George W. Bush in early 2008, a $787 billion bill pushed by President Obama as he took office in 2009 in the wake of the financial system’s collapse, and a tax cut and unemployment fund extension agreement reached by Mr. Obama and Congressional Republicans in December 2010.” And we’re talking about the need for more.

It’s not working. We’retrying to stimulate a caffeine junkie on their twelfth cup of coffee with a thirteenth cup. It’s no longer having the intended effect. A previous ConsumerShift post observed that the Great Recession was enabled the postmodern values shift toward less emphasis on material goods consumption. In an upcoming post, we’ll talk about people’s growing sense of “enoughness,” that is, we are seeking ways to get off the treadmill — the constant pressure to keep consuming. They are stepping back, re-prioritizing, and looking for ways to do with less.

These messages and plans for stimulus are falling on deaf ears. The ultimate challenge is how to design an economy that does not depend on debt-fueled growth to work — “consumers” are telling us that a different approach is needed. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Values Tagged With: consumer understanding, Consumershift, enoughness, postmoderns, values

The “New Normal” Obscures the Point

January 8, 2011 by Andy Hines Leave a Comment

This popular phrase, which my old firm considered as a title for a multi-client meeting in 2009, may be giving us the wrong impression. We went instead with “New Dimensions,” as we felt the New Normal provided a kind of false comfort that things were going to settle into a different, but entirely recognizable pattern. Basically, the future would be like the recent past, only less.

There is an element of truth to that, but it is a one-dimensional view, fixated on economics. For instance, a recent Business Week story, The New Normal Is So Normal, is focused entirely on the economic aspect. It represents what should be a new wave of “new normal” debunking stories that should soon be arriving with a message that the New Normal is bunk, and we’ll be returning to the “old normal” soon.

Regardless of which “normal” one believes in, the point is that the issue has been framed to over-emphasize the economic aspect. We used the “New Dimensions” idea to suggest greater changes were afoot. In particular, the slowly emerging shift to postmodern values, which suggests a consumption ethos of less, of feeling a sense of enough, of a desire to get back control of one’s time and life, of an emerging sense of sustainability, of a preference for the experience over material goods — these long-term changes have been underway for a generation, thus my belief that the current emphasis on the state of the economy may be obscuring them. Andy Hines

Filed Under: Future Hype, Values Tagged With: consumers, economy, enoughness, experiences, new normal, sustainaibility, values

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