Auction Culture
Posted on February 26, 2007
Filed Under What's New, For Argument's Sake |
I’m working on an article about how auctions have changed the way we relate to products. I found this somewhere on the web - wish I could remember where but it seemed pertinent without going far enough. Auctions work when the local information economy works. Without good information, you have lousy auctions. The fact that auctions are booming and have become culturally so important (a whole new class of EBay entrepreneurs now exists) says something about the impact of information transparency - it is good. So here’s what a shopping analyst says.
From Daniel Nissanoff, author of FutureShop: “An interesting phenomenon that somebody shared with me was that, as eBay began to grow, people began to buy musical instruments, especially guitars, much more frequently, because they weren’t as worried about taking up the wrong instrument or buying the wrong instrument and getting stuck with it. The auction culture is beginning to empower the consumer to reach because they can afford better items since they’re not paying the whole ticket for them. They know there’s going to be residual value at the end of the day and they’re willing to take more chances because they know there’s an exit if they made a mistake.” (Daniel Nissanoff interviewed by Tom Peters).
At the same time I’m interested in the way fractional ownership and rentals are now developing. You can go and rent a Gucci bag for a week, take part ownership in a Ferrari and generally aspire to the life of Reilly but not all the time. And here we are up to our necks in debt.
I can understand why somebody might want a crack at driving a performance car but renting a handbag is beyond me. It’s more than just getting a taste of the good life though isn’t it? Anyone got any great insights into what is changing about us as consumers? This week was going to be an election year series of posts and maybe it still is - would Bertie get re-elected if he was still wearing his old windcheater? That is what appearances mean…. the real crux of the new democracy though is information efficiency.
Put it another way why is the information economy working so well at triggering us to spend (providing us ample information about luxury lifestyles) but not working particularly well at explaining things like how much of the country’s wealth is actually generated by American companies diverting profit here to avoid US taxes? That kind of information might resolve paradoxes like:luxury spending is increasing at the same rate as debt.
fractional ownership renting luxury items irishelection2007
Comments
7 Responses to “Auction Culture”
Leave a Reply
I think much of this can be attributed to the fact that the information economy goes hand in hand with the experience economy. From Wikipedia - “According to B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in their 1999 book of the same name, is an advanced service economy which has begun to sell “mass customization” services that are similar to theatre, using underlying goods and services as props. Businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers, they argue, and that memory itself becomes the product - the “experience”.
Trendwatching.com is an excellent service for tracking consumer trends and just so happens to feature ‘Trysumers’ in the February edition - “Freed from the shackles of convention and scarcity, immune to most advertising, and enjoying FULL ACCESS TO INFORMATION, reviews and navigation experienced consumers are trying out new appliances, new services, new flavours, new authors, new destinations, new artists, new OUTFITS, new relationshis, new *anything* with post-market gusto…”
In the Ireland of even twenty years ago, the availability of products was limited to whatever the shops stocked in town. This was an accepted thing; you made do with what you could get. The occasional trip to Dublin was seen as visiting the Mecca of shopping destinations.
Now, we have what for all intents and purposes is an infinite variety of products, available to us at the click of a mouse. Yet, rather than satisfying us, the vastness of what’s available serves to increase our dissatisfaction with what we possess, making us want bigger, better, faster, more.
That’s why I think buying such luxuries is increasing in line with personal debt. Nobody’s satisfied with what they have anymore.
Good sites to keep up with the changing consumer are: http://springwise.com and http://trendwatching.com who focus on
Trysumers like TRANSUMERS who “are consumers driven by experiences instead of the ‘fixed’, by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom, who increasingly live a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the hassles of permanent ownership and possessions. The fixed is replaced by an obsession with the here and now, an ever-shorter satisfaction span, and a lust to collect as many experiences and stories as possible.* Hey, the past is, well, over, and the future is uncertain, so all that remains is the present, living for the ‘now’.” quoted from Trendwatching.
One other site to check out is mine, because it focusses on both the consumer and the plethora of fractional ownership and asset sharing opportunities available - http://www.fractionallife.com is a ‘fractional superstore’and you can read more at
http://www.springwise.com/lifestyle_leisure/onestop_shop_for_transumers_fr/
http://www.psfk.com/2006/12/fractional_life.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/business/09memo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/
Dan Nissanoff’s quoted on the site and so is Marvin Wilkinson of http://www.anterior-insight.com
- shall on venture to suggest the next group of consumers who are fractional ownership savy are known as “Fractional Lifers” or “Fractsumers”?
Some luxuries weren’t purchased before simply because they weren’t available due to lack of information. Nostalgia is a huge industry, with music, books, films, being re-issued, re-packaged, re-imagined, selling the same products to the same people repeatedly over their lives.
With the arrival of an all-reaching eBay, people could buy that book they had as a child, that anything they had as a child. They could cour a search engine and very quickly remember and then purchase a song they haven’t heard on any playlisted radio station since they were fifteen.
And true nostagia is regarded as treasure; the price is not a big deal for the buyer. Today I will contemplate buying things I’m familiar with my my entire lifetime - simply because I can. I’ll buy bread and milk first, but there’s a lot of fun in the power of the infinite market. And comfort in the old familiar unnecessaries especially while going deeper into debt.
Greater information also brings the perception of greater value. Before the information was available to search and bid for everything, you had a limited range of options, possibly all beyond your budget. Increase the options dramatically, and you increase the liklihood of spending, and debt.
Beyond the novelty of shopping online, I see the experience of shopping becoming more important - in a luxury sense. More trips to New York from Ireland for example, just for shopping.
Oh, and on the performance car and handbag thing - I’ve no personal interest in either, so I understand both.
Hi Piers, welcome to the site. I haven’t forgotten fractional life - hope to be doing something on it soon and will get back to you.
And welcome to Kansas City! But what about the idea that you are now buying sure in the knowledge that you can dispose of what you buy through an online site? Is that driving luxury purchases?
And nearly forgot - while we’re enjoying fuller information to goods why are we not more frustrated by the lack of access to information about political decisions or public services?
Doesn’t voting typically go down, the more a population spends? It’s almost as if the purchase of luxury goods is seen as the ultimate empowerment thereby rendering politics less relevant. So maybe the greater the information for consumerism, the greater the distraction from political decisions and public service.
Surely though, despite all the frustrations we may feel, there is better information in reality about political decisions or public services - it’s just not as driven by the same manic enthusiasm as technology’s start-up enterprise culture?
And yes, the information flows in all directions so the auction culture does provide saftey in buying that strange musical instrument hand-fashined in Africa, or even that CD you’re not too sure of (despite all the information out there to actually listen to it first -too much information?) in that CD club it’s too easy to join, because you can drop it back into the online merry-go-round for a chunk of your spending. It’s just an easier facilitation of what many people already did by buying clothes from department stores that they had no intention of keeping, only now it’s normal busniess flow and then it was for the brass-necked.
I bought an external USB TV card for my laptop several years ago believing it wouldn’t live up to expectations but deciding to give it a go for the Christmas. Tech hardware is easy to dispose of online; even buying laptop batteries knowing you are risking their lifelessness is not so risky when you see so many being sold as openly dead on eBay.
But that safety net of the auction culture only applies to the physical of course, and with the increase in information comes an increase in information products. So much now is a service, bought by a subscription I don’t know that you can trade in so easily upon rejection. And the first flights I bought online were on an auction site seven years ago. There was a great power then in using the information to get value you believed wasn’t available to you otherwise, so no safety net was necessary as a motivation to buy.
There is definitely an enormously reassuring quality in seeing the amount of traffic in the auction world, that lets you know your online purchases are not at risk of being to the only person on the planet who wants them. You never got that disposal comfort buying in the brick-and-mortar world.