Inconspicuous consumption

The Future Foundation’s Richard Nicholls looks at the changing attitudes of consumers, which require more subtle and thought-out advertising techniques…

Ostentation is not a favoured behavioural mode for many consumers who can nevertheless afford serious quality in their lives. Competitive individualism is not the social force it was. Quietly expressed savoir-vivre makes many markets run.

There are a number of objects which, once procured, scream a story of personal success. To drive a Boxster Spyder to work, to call friends using a Vertu Constellation Quest Luxury smartphone, to wear a Dior three-piece in silk champagne, to carry one’s bits in a Fendi handbag, to summer in one’s home in Saint Paul de Vence… is to parade very emphatic symbols of wealth and (arguably) sophistication. These are not softly-spoken, just-trying-to-get-through-the-day possessions. They invite the stare and perhaps the envy of others. They deny the need for careful humility in life.

It was once a widespread conviction that such consumer impulses were absolutely vital to the performance of markets. To the extent that consumption could be competitive – i.e. that people would like to buy things which they could, with pride, show to others who did not yet own them – so companies could happily keep inventing new product styles and variants, innovate new definitions of luxury, churn consumer tastes towards fresh expressions of personal elevation.

For a number of reasons, our proposition in the trend of Inconspicuous Consumption is that such competitive individualism is not the force it was. Some of these can be listed as follows:

• The power of the environmentalist ethic. Over the last generation, the argument that a society like the UK over-consumes, wastes too many resources, guzzles scarce energy, has hit the cultural target. Even to take a lot of long-haul holidays is not so bragg-able in polite, green company; who is going to talk with vanity about the size of his carbon footprint?

• A de-stressed culture of social mobility. There are fewer outright snobs on the streets or in our soaps. There is just not the same pent-up demand for proof, branded proof that one has made a successful transition upwards into a different class.

• The assumption of unstable economics. The recession of the late 00s and its aftershocks have shaken the optimism of even robustly prosperous middle-class homes. It is now, as a result, more crass to vaunt out loud how much you recently paid for your suit or your car or your holiday. By 2010, around 70% of people even in the higher income segment were agreeing that: “I shop around extensively to get the best deals”. It is just not cool to be a thoughtless spendthrift. Instead social approval is now won by showing what a skilful and focused shopper one is. Meanwhile, large banker bonuses seem odious to many.

In a society where, even given the damage of cyclical recessions, the total volume of incomes doubles in real terms with each generation, where so many aspirations are being actively met rather than being confounded by a lowly background or a limited income, many consumers must now feel that there is nothing special, nothing particularly unique, about at least the odd moment of luxury consumption. We know from nVision data that only around 20% of people agree that: “I try to buy things I know no-one else owns”. The outcome is a culture in which luxury can be enjoyed for its intrinsic merits; it does not need to glister or glow in the company of others.

In the 2010 nVision Research shown in the chart on the left we found that what people enjoyed talking about the most (or at least what they admitted to enjoying talking about the most) was less likely to be traditionally materialist topics such as their clothes or their car. Technology was rather more popular but the most popular topic from this battery of questions was “holidays I have recently taken”, suggesting that social and cultural capital is, these days, to be found more in our experiences than in our ownership – what we have done rather than what we have. And we find that “products I have bought at a good discount/price” is one of the more popular topics, even among higher social grades; in the post-crunch world there is serious social capital in how many pennies we can save rather than just how much we spend.

We do not argue here that Inconspicuous Consumption is an essentially depressive force inside markets. The demand for quality is still systemic but such quality does not need to be over-stated. As the chart on the right suggests, the numbers of people who are moved to express their personality through what they buy/wear are low – and not the numbers they were. Consumers are more relaxed, perhaps. In this setting, we recall the vitality of the modern renting market for luxury goods such as designer fashions, sports cars and dress jewellery. We just do not need to own-and-show on the same 20th century model any more. In this context we note that, according to the latest wave of the European Social Survey, British respondents were among the least likely to agree that they “want to have a lot of money and expensive things” (the third lowest out of the 28 countries surveyed).

This trend nourishes the debate within marketing communications about how to sell and what to sell in an ever less class-defined society, no longer full of consumers who either want to boast or are nervous about making social gaffes. In our argument here, Inconspicuous Consumption has become a powerful and permanent-looking consumer attitude, which will continue to call forth ever more subtle communication imageries.

For more, contact Richard Nicholls at the Future Foundation on 020 3008 6103/ richardn@futurefoundation.net.