Category Archives: Consumerism

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and the bah humbugs

December 18, 2015 8:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been on a theater kick for the past couple of years and we are right now at the tail end of the 2015 Fall theater season in Houston.  I just have to say that the theater scene in Houston keeps getting better and better all the time.  Houston has gained a national reputation for its fine dining choices and I can see a time when it gains a name as a live theater mecca as well.

But anyways, some of the local troupes that I follow put on Christmas and holiday related plays to cap the year.  Stark Naked Theater put on “Ho Ho Humbug 2.0“, Bayou City Theatrics put on “The 12 dates of Christmas“, and the Classical Theater Company put on “A Christmas Carol“.

The last is of course the classic Charles Dickens story and I wanted to see it as I’ve never seen it performed live but the other two were contemporary stories set in or near present day America and dealt mainly with how we perceive and deal with this time of year.

For better or for worse, people in this country have come to associate this holiday season with certain things.

  • Religion of course.  This is a christian holiday and at one time this was a predominantly christian nation.  Whether you agree with it or not you can’t deny that there is an influence there.
  • Traditions that bind us to certain European countries where Americans originated from
  • Commercialism which is more of an american tradition.

From the late 19th century till about the Mid 20th century this was the Christmas season (the term “holiday season” wasn’t in widespread use).  Government, Church, and commercial interests helped spread and foster the season and developed it into what we came to know as Christmas time.

But then in the mid 20th century we began to see this change over time.  People started to notice that this time of year didn’t resonate with everyone.

One of the earliest examples was the Peanuts Christmas TV special where one of the characters proclaimed that Christmas was a racket and controlled by some company “back East”.  This illustrated the disconnect that some people had always felt around this time of year.

Mass media began to notice that besides the Christian majority that there were people from other faiths in this country and that more and more new Americans were arriving from non western European lands.

At the same time, commercial interests were moving to leverage the holiday for all it was worth.  Store displays are now put up as much as two months in advance and even though there has been some consumer backlash over this, they don’t seem to care that much.

I thought about all these points as I attended the plays I mentioned up above.

Christmas Carol is of course the original story about someone who has disconnected from the holiday.  Scrooge had consciously made a decision to set himself apart from humanity.  The spirits show him that this was not always the case and that he still had time to fix this condition.

12 dates of Christmas was a story about a woman who loses her fiance at Thanksgiving time and for the next 12 months has disastrous dates with various men.  She reflects on how “family centered” that the holidays can be and how single people can feel ostracized around the holiday season.

Ho ho Humbug 2.0 was the most poignant of the three.  A writer, that hates the holidays, needs a temporary job to make his rent and by accident winds up playing a store Santa Claus.  Through some soliloquies the writer explains that even as a child he had never connected to Christmas and that he felt that this job was a farce.

As the play progresses and he interacts with his co-workers and with the customers, he comes to see that Christmas means so much more than the commercialism, the decorations and customs, and even the religious aspect.  Christmas had a distinct meaning to everyone he met.  In the end he doesn’t embrace all the aspects of the holiday but he comes to find a way that he can celebrate the season and make it his own.

I think that last point is the most important.  I see some people decrying the holidays as being too commercial, too religious, too superficial.  But then I look around at people from other parts of the world cheerfully celebrating the holiday and pretty much just ignoring the bits that they don’t like or understand.

For example, Christmas is huge in Japan for the gifting aspect.  Not many Christians there.  I know some Jewish families that put up Christmas trees and focus in on the gift giving and celebration aspects.  Last year I was on vacation in the tropics at this time of year and I saw some of the locals decorating their hut with a Christmas tree.

I guess what I am trying to say is that you need to make the holiday your own in order to enjoy it.  Most people enjoy the season out of habit.  But for those that find the season to be a chore or a bother, I think that if you look more closely that there is something there for you to enjoy as well.

 

Merry Christmas

Posted in: Christmas, consumerism, culture, current events, holidays, Houston, life in general, pop culture, theater, thought , Tagged: ,

Appropriate

May 25, 2015 6:21 PM , Leave a Comment ,

I was at a convention recently.  One of those pop culture conventions that caters to the younger crowd and as is my wont I tend to wander round the dealer’s room for hours at a time discovering new things and resisting the urge to buy everything.

Anyways I was near the center and I came upon a small tent display for a large name insurance company.  They were offering the usual little knickknacks that they give away at conventions (fridge magnets, paperweights, pens, etc) and they were trying to get names and email addresses.  A few rows over another company was advertising high-end bedding.

This made me wonder who came up with this?  I mean I understand the advertising concept of “go where there’s a crowd”, but I mean really?  Hawking bedding and insurance at a pop culture convention inhabited mainly by kids, teens, and twentysomethings?  What type of resources (as in $) are they throwing into this effort and what sort of return are they realistically expecting to get from this?

Of course this isn’t the only example I saw of this type of thing. Over the memorial day weekend there were of course several sporting events including some major races and many of these events have corporate sponsorship but at least there the expected audience is more generalized and it’s more likely that you will get some return on your investment.

This idea of just showing up at these conventions and trying to plug yourself in no matter what really doesn’t make any sense to me.

At the very least I would hope that these companies might try to come up with some themes, giveaways, or some sort of tie in to the convention that might somehow appeal to the expected audience.  Something so they won’t seem so out-of-place.

Posted in: activities, business, consumerism, conventions

Living within our means

April 30, 2015 7:04 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been doing a lot with my personal finances in the last few months.  Included in this was the purchase of a new car.  Something that I undeniably need living in Houston but yet some would argue I could have gotten something more pedestrian, less flashy, and more modest.  Some have asked if it is something that I can afford.

To which the answer is yes.  This was something that I’ve been thinking about for over a year and the numbers do make sense.  Now, I could have gotten something more modest, true but the cost difference really wasn’t going to be that great and I do feel that I got quite a bit for my money.  So I still feel that this was a good bargain for me.

Nevertheless these are valid concerns.  In my lifetime I’ve seen how quickly people can get in trouble with easy credit and overspending.  When I was in school the message boards were crammed with credit card applications for students to fill out and even though most students either didn’t work or worked part-time jobs they got ridiculously high credit lines.  Of course within a month or two these kids got into some real financial problems that took years to clear up.

But that’s just symptomatic of our culture or even our civilization as a whole.  We like to push the limits to the extreme and even break the limits till we get into trouble with not just money but resources, living space, and population size.

Take California for example.  The golden state with promises of endless farmlands carved out of the desert, green suburbs without end, and abundant, cheap water hauled from hundreds of miles away. What happens when the waters fail to come year after year?  The answer is the tragedy that’s slowly unfolding right now and affects not just millions of Californians but millions of people across the country and the world that depend on the produce grown there.

What will happen to that population?  They won’t just dry up and blow away.  We’ll soon see them in our neighborhoods looking for work and sharing our resources.  Problems that might have been sidestepped if we had not insisted on trying to squeeze every last resource out of a desert that wasn’t ready to take so many people in the first place.

California will heal but it will take a long time.  My question is when it heals and the rain cycle is restored will we go back and make the same mistakes again or will we learn and not try to live past the capacity of the land?

Posted in: consumerism, current events, economy, energy, environment, future, life in general, technology, thought, weather

Brand loyalty wars

March 5, 2015 6:20 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Every couple of years planned obsolescence catches up with me.  No matter how good that laptop or cell phone or even car was when you bought it eventually you have to replace it.

In some cases it really seems to be planned.  My smartphone contract is 2 years long and in about 2 years my smartphone pretty much becomes obsolete so time to get a new one.

Then of course comes the competing advertising and opinions and advice from partisans from all sides advocating their own point of view. I wrote something about this partisanship a couple of years ago.  Some people will swear by their technology choices and will not yield an inch on anything.

Even though I try to keep clear of biases I suppose I do have some of my own.

My mobile provider for example.  Widely regarded as one of the worst providers for a long time it had the one benefit that my contract had an unlimited data package.  It in fact was the only unlimited data package for a long time before competitors began offering that as well.  In the meantime my providers signal strength and coverage has grown substantially so I could have hopped from provider to provider looking for the best deal but in the end sitting still and letting things develop proved to be the best strategy.  Sometimes doing nothing at all is the best strategy.  Shrug.

But other times, no matter how much you hate to do it, you have to admit that you have to change.

In a related vein I have looked at the specs of the updated version of my smartphone and have determined that it’s not going to meet my needs so off I go looking at other brands.  I have about 6 months to decide but already I’m looking over different models and brands for any marked advantage.

In this case my brand loyalty is absolutely nil.  The maker simply dropped the ball on the new design and I have to look for something that will meet my needs.  I did the same with my last car.  I used to drive an SUV and the maker stopped producing it so I changed not just brands but car types and got a sedan instead.  When it comes to practical items that I use every day I find that I am that way.  If something doesn’t meet my needs then I will stop using it.  When it comes to something less tangible like say fashion choices I may have more brand loyalty.

I think that’s something for makers of practical goods to consider more than say how stylish their product looks or what celebrity endorsements they can get.

If you meet your customers needs, and satiate their desires for a good quality product then the market will come to you.  You will not have to go to them by altering your product and possibly making it worse.  Remember where the core of your clientele is and go out and meet them.

Posted in: business, consumerism, shopping, technology

the dream diminished

April 25, 2014 6:36 AM , 3 Comments ,

I was digging through my linen closet the other day, sorting out useful and useless stuff.  In the back of the closet I found some old bath towels that I had not seen in ages.  They were plush and fluffy terry cloth towels and though a little threadbare they were still useful.

My parents had bought these for me way back when I got my first college apartment.  I think they bought them at a Target or Sears or some such place.  What struck me as odd is how good they were.  I mean back in the early 90s when they bought them they were low to middle class bath towels, nothing special.  I compared them to some designer towels from a high-end department store that I bought a couple of years ago and there was no comparison.  These old towels put the new ones to shame.

What was going on?  I looked on the tags and found part of the answer.  The old towels were 100% terry cloth cotton.  The new ones were 40% rayon.

But it’s not just a case of towels.  The more I thought about it over the next few days, the more I realized that the quality of various things had decreased.  The new things were still adequate, still useful, but the quality of the materials, the design, the craftsmanship had deteriorated.  Over the long haul we have grown slowly accustomed to accepting less and expecting less.

Another unrelated event.  A new apartment building went up in flames during construction recently.  On a local radio station a fire fighter commented that older buildings usually took between 30 and 40 minutes to be fully engulfed in flames due the materials and building standards used, while new buildings could go up in about 5 minutes.

I wonder how an archaeologist from a thousand years in the future might view these facts.  Would she look at artifacts from the 1950s and compare them to the 2000s and conclude that she had found the dividing line between the rise and fall of our civilization?

It’s not just physical artifacts that have deteriorated over time but services as well.  I vaguely remember my first ride on an airplane back in the 70s.  I think we were going to see my grandparents in North Carolina and I recall that the airport was a giant open and well-lit mall-like area.  The passengers were well dressed and we had no security to worry about in those days.  The plane seemed huge and the seats were over sized and plush.  The flight crew was happy and eager to help.  If I had to summarize the experience in one word it would be luxurious.

These days the airports are crowded, dingy, moodily lit bus stations.  The passengers dress any which way they want, they are forced into lines to wait and be searched like common criminals and are then forced into tiny hard plastic and metal seats in the plane.  The flight crews are overworked and surly and I would summarize the experience as dilapidated.

What has improved (arguably) is the entertainment available to the populace.  The quantity of distractions accessible to the average citizen has skyrocketed not only in the amount but in the variety available.  Anyone, regardless of income can now purchase music players, video players, game consoles, or portable computers and access entertainment choices ranging from sports, to music, to shows and movies, to games that will serve to distract them at home or even on the subway ride home.

For those that can look past the entertainments there is an avalanche of information inundating the senses.  Pundits sort through it all and tell us what to make of it and blame “the other side” for our problems.

Have we become so satiated and numbed by pop culture and media that we don’t notice the concrete decline in our living standards or am I being overly harsh and critical about the way that the world works these days?

Have I finally succumbed to the “old man’s disease” of comparing things to the good old days?

Posted in: consumerism, culture, future, life in general, thought

brand loyalty

January 3, 2014 7:24 AM , Leave a Comment ,

 

Style rarely comes into play when I consider making everyday purchases and is rarely a factor when making major purchases.  I tend to favor the durability and utility of an item before style or branding.  But I have to admit that it does come into play over the long haul.

This is probably not the best example, but back in the day when I used to be a Coca Cola addict I would appreciate every aspect of Coca Cola.  From the slightly citrusy taste, to the sugar levels, to the logo design and even the particular shade of red that they use.  All other soft drinks were poor copies at best.

Now to be clear I don’t think you should drink any sort of sugary soft drinks.  Considering the amount of Coca Cola that I used to drink, I am extremely surprised that I did not become a diabetic.  But I have to admit that every aspect of the Coca Cola experience was extremely well done and all the packaging that went into it made it distinct and encouraged customers to seek it out in the stores.

They have a great product and great marketing to make sure that it stays at the top of the soft drink market.  A good brand will come to symbolize satisfaction in the consumer’s mind but a great brand will get associated in that person’s mind with “feeling right”

In computers, I’ve been with the Windows operating system for so long that I get an odd feeling when I have to use a computer that uses the Apple or LINUX operating system or even when they revamped the look of the operating system like they did with Windows 8.  I wanted to reset the look of the system to the “classic” Windows style just because I like the way it worked.

It’s not just that things are done in a different way in these operating systems it’s that I don’t feel that they are doing things in a proper way.  Other options may be perfectly fine but when the consumer gets “hooked” into a particular brand then no amount of persuasion will change his mind.

When you not only deliver a good solid product but also give it a particular style all its own and you associate that style in the consumer’s mind you can own that person’s loyalty.  Even though your quality may slip from time to time, that brand loyalty will keep that customer coming back again until you fix your quality issues.

Posted in: consumerism, motivation