Sunday, August 03, 2008 Sun.Star Essay: Survival style By Erma M. Cuizon
AN interesting AP story was recently carried by this paper---about changes in US consumers’ habits. As some bloggers put it, it’s living large on a small budget, that’s the big change. And this tells us to adapt to the times of high oil cost and the world economic crunch as a whole.
The retailer sector is surely adjusting to the times and the new buying habits or the resurrected old ones. So the language for the consumer business is “Buy and save now.”
Then there’s a careful review of the market on the part of business.
We had advertising as a quick lesson back in college, a small part of the journalism course. You’re told to remember the matter of what marketing does to connect effectively. In particular, for one, a store was cited in class to have gone into details on consumer behavior in the course of finding out which products on a shelf in one location were selling more than those of others. The storeowner studied this carefully. His advertising man watched quietly how consumers did the shelves, so to say. How did the consumer’s eyes travel—from left to right, up and down? At top or bottom, or in the negotiable middle?
A more substantial look into it would mean marketing teams going into “attitude-behavior” studies which are “logical, sequential, and propositional ….emotional and intuitive?”
Even in magazines or newspapers, don’t you wonder where the eyes land on a newly-opened page---left or right? One space would be more potent than another in terms of effective consumer lure at the time of reading, such that some pages cost more, as advertising space, than the others.
Then it should be interesting to find out what the factors are which change a consumer’s habit, including the captive job done by advertising. What if it is the rising cost of commodities and services, the inability to buy items more costly than before?
What makes the eyes linger, or simply scan in quick, painful glances?
Now with the economic crunch, there will be consumer habits abandoned, revised, tucked in for the moment until things get better.
In the article on changes in American consumer habits are mentioned particular examples, such as one woman who recently bought a shoe glue with which to fix her shoe. Thus, she spent only for the cost of the glue, not for a new pair of shoes. By the way, she also holds two jobs and now rides a bike to office.
In New York, it didn’t surprise me to see a Black man some years back drive a car whose front was smoking. The machine looked like it could conk on him any time. Obviously, he didn’t have the money for the expensive repair services and he didn’t know how to fix it himself. He’d use it as long as it was useful and send it to the junkyard when it finally refused to move, then buy another car.
But in these times in America, someone like this owner of a rickety car would have to learn how to fix it. Besides, if he’d really try to buy a new one, he’d have to make sure it’s not a lemon.
And no one in the West is like the Filipinos who drink and sing together but also teach each other how to fix anything. In here, it’s difficult to afford a new car, fixing is more like it.
More on survival fashion, there are many articles on the Internet which talk about enduring, going “back to basics.”
Do the wet markets, like Carbon or Ramos, and get cheaper pork and fish, says the practical house wife. Of course, she rides the jeepney in going there, the cab is 10 pesos more per ride these days. No, she doesn’t use the gas-guzzler car.
Probably families would have to go back to tap water, instead of buy distilled water in plastic containers? In restaurants, you’d ask for tap water, instead of pay more for the distilled one. How about, as another article cites, cooking once for both breakfast and lunch to save on electricity? Or perhaps go back to the old use of coal as fuel in cooking? And go for veggies, they’re cheaper than meat. Or eat out less, this time.
Shall I see you at the nearest ukay-ukay corner, after a quick, cheap but refreshing pungko-pungko lunch?
