Consumption and Happiness: Can We Reconcile Them (Nikes’ Value)?

Are consumption and happiness related? Many people live their lives under the assumption that they are, and the fact that they do is most likely marketers’ fault. But, what is the purpose of marketing? Two words that easily come to mind when pondering what marketing could be are “sales” and “manipulation”. Marketing, under this construction, is simply a set of methods designed to get people to buy something. Many companies work under this model and, accordingly, assemble a team of people whose unique purpose is to convince customers, by whatever means, that they need whatever it is they offer. This is an outdated, exhausting, and risky approach.

There is an alternative to this, of course. Many people ignore it, but nowadays marketing is about value.  This is not an easy concept to grasp, but we can roughly express it somewhat along these lines: “it is not mainly about you, as a company, making profits; it is about me, as a customer, getting something good out of our transaction.” Value is giving the customer what she wants or needs (Here you can find a nice value taxonomy). Getting to know customers to satisfy them is not easy, but when the task is properly carried out sales, as traditionally conceived, are not even necessary; persuasion is out of the picture.

One challenge with value is that people change. For instance, many people nowadays think value must go beyond themselves, something I agree with. So, products have to fulfil users’ own needs, and also their needs as beings who participate in a global community: “Yeah, your shoes are top-of-the-line (comfortable, stylish, durable), but if I find out they have been manufactured in India by a company that exploits workers, I might change my mind about making a deal with you. In a nutshell, your shoes do not fulfil my moral needs: I feel bad, guilty, buying them.”

Yesterday, I was watching a really interesting video on Youtube. The video was about consumerism and the critics it faces by some academics, like famous linguist Noam Chomsky. Here:

One of the topics the video discusses is how valuable the things some companies sell are for us as human beings. It further advances the moral needs’ suggestion I just made. For most of us, material objects just give us a rewarding, short-term, feeling that does not contribute to our happiness in the long run. Consumption and happiness are then currently dissociated. Brainstorming how to connect them is highly interesting because it has the potential of merging the concept of value usually taught in marketing departments with the one we find in other disciplines, such as philosophy, where human being’s flourishing and happiness is a classical topic. Here is a suggestion.

I am of the opinion that an economy with hundreds of shoe brands does not make us any happier. Apart from economic considerations related to monopolies, a few shoe brands offering their customers a reasonable set of alternatives seems enough to satisfy any real need. Maybe in the future, we will have more companies in the business of making life genuinely better. Maybe we will have more people recording interesting podcasts or guided meditations, writing more awesome books, or shooting more thrilling movies. Maybe marketing will eventually progress to a more embracing and progressive concept of value and link things, that up to now, have run their separate courses: consumption and happiness.