American commerce is a catalyst for the solidification of market for markets inasmuch as a fire’s insatiable need for consumption in order to thrive. Imagine for a moment consumers as fire and the goods they consume as fuel, in its various forms. Left to necessity, fire will still consume, and fuel will still be consumed, but with strategic acceleration for added consumption, and disposable facets intended to quickly become obsolete, additional revenue can be generated. Factors outside the realm of sheer necessity must play a significant role in the consumer’s choice to obtain a good. Successful sublimation to convey a sense of sex, empowerment, sophistication, beauty, status, or any other attribute a consumer desires to posses, acts as an accelerant to the flame, further intensifying the rate of consumption. Implementation of desirability to a product arouses a primal urge of possession that need not be internally justified in the actual decision making process of a purchase. A utopian model to maximize the inferno would be cheaply fabricated, yet highly stylized products containing disposable components. Thus tactics upon the subconscious through understated implication and implicit innuendos compel us to do what fire does best, consume.
In the past, products were often overbuilt and lasted far too long. While serving the consumer with quality, it was an inefficient process of consumption, drawing much resource with little room for replacement expenditure. The model had to be modified to incorporate both aspects of disposability, and plans for a replacement, giving the consumer an option to upgrade before the product concluded its useful lifespan. The underlining motivation would be based on, among others, the emotional feeling of inadequacy in the product a consumer may already own, and not in true necessity. This also, at least partially, instigated the need for faster manufacturing of similar, but improved, products. Products need to be replaced as quickly as possible, never repaired, in regard to retail commerce as the profiteer. Proprietary parts and disposable components of products became the name of the game. A toilet wand with flushable heads comes to mind. Quality of construction and materials has been superseded by fast trends, distinctive styling and the silent pressure to own the best. With the fleeting integrity of today’s product we somehow seem assured that we are buying into something newer. Ideally, there must be more than just increased efficiency to a product’s replacement. The upgrade needs to personify enhancement, and indicate through updated styling, that it is better suited, more advanced, and in all regards a superior product to the one you own. Simply stated, you shouldn’t have to read an item’s description or see the price tag; but by looking at the two side by side, a product and its successor, know beyond a shadow which one is better.
Egon Friedell may have coined it best, “There are no realities anymore, there is only apparatus…. Neither are there goods any more, but only advertisements.” Another, equally important, apparatus of American marketing that often times dodges the radar is the cloaked tactic of fear as a marketing agent. Aside from the obvious defensive implements, fear has sold us homes in nicer neighborhoods, new, as opposed to used, cars, anti-virus programs, anti-aging creams, surge protectors, sheet protectors and literally hundreds of thousands of unrelated items. Fear can be argued to be the opposite of desire and perhaps even the Yin, or dark, of the two major “manufactured” tools of American merchandising. The two are joined in this illustration and an improved business model, igniting both a sense of desire for the new product and fear of the old product being inadequate, begins to emerge.
Subdivision and specialty increase consumption by creating an additional need for articulated replacement parts and upgrades that are supposed to streamline and optimize our lives. Yet the true trend is that of additional expense. One would have to conclude that if full “optimization” were to occur, we would find ourselves in a disposable world. Disposable sheets for the toilet seat, one-time use cat boxes, throw-away silverware and shoe covers. The growing sub classification of markets into supporting markets insures that consumption will never reach its saturation. Throw into the mix the sexy allure of new technologies and improved styling, and coveted products become all the more irresistible. As long as consumers can finance, charge or even afford to upgrade, the ever expanding depth of calculated necessity promises to make it more hygienic, less of a hassle, and more fun to use.