I have endeavoured to re-elaborate on certain information and opinions that I put forward as ideas to reflect on the way which, today, we take for granted things that “we need” in our everyday lives.
In a world that, we can casually say, is changing very quickly, and in particular where globalization and the world wide web have effectively turned market forces upside-down, it sometimes seems that we lose the significance of the concept of “mass market”, while, increasingly, it is the individual or consumer who creates his own personal micro-market.
It is increasingly difficult to identify groups of consumers with homogenous tastes (the classic “target” often cited by marketing experts) while the “EGO”, so dear to those who are, or who pretend to be psychologists, is back on the scene and, are effectively merely individuals with their own creativity and their own tastes and who influence or inspire companies to create new products in every field.
Today, people seem less embarrassed (even proud) to show themselves as they really are, and they tend to steadfastly refuse (to only then strangely accept them… but this is another story) mass standardization and therefore, at the same time deny, in buying the object, the “ready-made” styles. Effectively, today people are less influenced when choosing, they are less embarrassed to mix different styles, they choose one brand today and then snub it tomorrow, they do not fall for trends but observe them, they collect only what they like and, more frequently than ever, they create.
One very interesting thing is the fact that, especially thanks to the ease in which information is “globally” gathered, that is not restricted by national boundaries but, not even taking into consideration other variables, individuals have an ever increasing consumer behaviour that transcends nationality, age, tradition and cultural constraints.
To keep “on track” with the theme of this site, I believe I can permit myself to say, also based on what I have read in the Press, that products and services which we consider “a luxury” today can be seen carrying different connotations in respect to the past, and that even items that were previously not labelled this way, can now be considered “a luxury”. In fact, today luxury can also be thought as:
- No longer ostentatious or status symbol, but an object linked to the individual and therefore takes its value from the unique and intense experience of every person who lives the object (even if this is almost always based on socially shared values)
- Emotion combined with innovation
- Personalization, with objects that are (or appear to be) exclusively made for me
In this light, it can also be said that, at least for a few, the search for perfection pursued by progress is not important, but they give ever increasing importance to the value of nature, slow lifestyles, real “things” and, because of this, not perfect. Hand-crafted products are always different from one another, there is always a slight imperfection or defects which make them UNIQUE and absolutely irreproducible.
People, who today prefer to not hide their own “imperfections”, but who instead value their own complexities, are those who are perfectly mirroring this attitude even in the things they buy. Identifying oneself in what one buys also means the personalization of the object, refusing, as we have said, the standardization, the bias, the styles “dictated” by others, the status symbols and, in contrast, the desire to express and surround oneself with things that represent us, to share with others and be enriched by such a sharing of personal and different tastes and values.
