June « 2010 « The New Consumer

Archive for June, 2010

Blowing Homemade Bubbles

June 30th, 2010 | by Andrew Benett, CEO, Arnold Worldwide and Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

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Excerpted from Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2010)

Along with “Bridezilla,” lavish weddings have gotten a bad rap lately—further evidence that the rightsizing mentality is taking hold. “When Wedding Is a Big Show, Marriage Often Doesn’t Last,” one newspaper grimly warns us. But perhaps the divorce rate is about to fall: Sifting for trends among the more than two million weddings in the United States in 2009, wedding planners noted a growing preference for simplicity and intimacy—smaller ceremonies with fewer guests, choosing off-peak times (mornings, afternoons, Fridays and Sundays, with October “the new June”). As couples found new ways to economize, spending slumped 10 percent compared with 2008, which itself had seen a decline of around 20 to 30 percent from the year prior. Bridal registries have shown a definite shift toward simplification, the casual, and the practical.
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The Chinese Prosumer: Different Perspective, Same Values

June 30th, 2010 | by Marianne Hurstel, Chief Strategy Officer, Euro RSCG Worldwide

As I was working on the New Consumer study, two figures caught my attention: The first figure shows that 62 percent of Prosumers agree that the recession has served to remind people of what’s really important in life—and that’s a good thing. But if there’s a real consensus on this major subject, only the Chinese seem able to see beyond the diagnostic. And only the Chinese are willing to make change happen. Indeed, more than half of the Chinese Prosumers think that, over the long term, this economic downturn will be a good thing for their country, whereas the totals don’t exceed 30 to 40 percent among Prosumers in any of the other countries surveyed.
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| Tags: BETC, China, conscious consumption, consumers, consumption, globalization, Marianne Hurstel, mindful consumption, New Consumer
Post a Comment | 1 Comment | in Consumerism, New Consumer

I’ll Have an “Old Beijing Twister”; Thanks, Colonel

June 27th, 2010 | by Matt Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer, Euro RSCG 4D and PR North America

Look at the two pictures above—notice anything? They’re the same—both are KFC. Look again—the one on the top is a KFC in Shanghai, China; the one on the bottom is in Palmdale, California.

If you asked the New Consumer in the U.S. and in China about KFC’s food, you’d get similar statistical answers as to the food being inexpensive, not as good as homemade, and not as good for one’s health as fresh local food.

So you could conclude that KFC in China is the same as KFC in the U.S., and draw conclusions about how global food brands should react. Right? Wrong.
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| Tags: China, consumers, consumption, Euro RSCG, globalization, Matt Donovan, Recession
Post a Comment | in Consumerism, New Consumer, Recession

Anti-Consumerism Taking Off

June 16th, 2010 | by Marian Salzman, President, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America

The New Consumers are savvier and more demanding and have a whole lot more power, but not every company and industry seems to get that. Lately I’ve been encountering more and more gestures that feel downright anti-consumer. The worst offenders include, unsurprisingly, the airlines. Anyone who has been on a plane in the past decade knows that flying isn’t what it used to be, but recently it seems like it’s turned into nothing less than a race to the bottom: Which carrier can alienate its customers the most? How can they make the experience even more miserable? Who can treat passengers the worst?
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| Tags: Airlines, customer service, Euro RSCG, Marian Salzman, New Consumer, Recession, Travel
Post a Comment | 5 Comments | in Consumerism, New Consumer, Recession, Travel

POV: Peter Pan(ics)

June 10th, 2010 | by Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Knowledge Exchange

In the 1960s The Who sang defiantly, “I hope I die before I get old.” That lyric reflected the aspirations voiced by generations of pop culture icons to “live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse”—a sentiment expressed in one form or another by such marquee names as Bonnie and Clyde, James Dean, and Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. For decades following World War II, the glamour of devil-may-care youth has been the brightest beacon on the horizon, guiding the quest to remain forever young.
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| Tags: accountability, Ann O'Reilly, consumers, consumption, delayed adulthood, Euro RSCG, Peter Pan, youth
Post a Comment | 3 Comments | in Consumed, Growing Up, New Consumer, Responsibility

The Relief of Rightsizing

June 10th, 2010 | by Stuart Harris, CEO, Richer Business

The modern world has achieved extraordinary progress in making some things smaller: mobile phones, cameras, and, of course, nanotechnology. iPods are so small they habitually end up in the washing machine. More pervasive in our hyperconsumerist culture, however, has been the unspoken assumption that Bigger Is Better. Obvious examples include wide-screen TVs (even though they make normal people look squashed and dumpy), massive SUVs such as the Hummer and Escalade, and supersized portions, from 20-ounce lattes to tubs of popcorn practically big enough to accommodate a bathing baby. The average home size in the United States in 2004 was 2,330 square feet, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970. Mega-malls, mega-churches, and mega-plexes are now par for the course.
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| Tags: consumer consciousness, consumers, consumption, decluttering, excess, mindful consumption, Richer Business, simplicity movement, simplification, Stuart Harris, waste
Post a Comment | 2 Comments | in Consumerism, New Consumer, Purposeful Pleasure, Rightsizing

Bad News from Europe

June 8th, 2010 | by Marian Salzman, President, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America

The financial headlines from Europe have been nothing but bleak: defaults; a $1 trillion bailout; speculation that the euro might disappear; discontent and strife in countries from Greece to Germany.
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| Tags: bailout, consumer confidence, Euro RSCG, Europe, fear, financial crisis, globalization, Greece, investing, Marian Salzman, media, messaging, Recession
Post a Comment | in Recession

Signs of Change: Sam Gets Sustainable

June 7th, 2010 | by Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

Let’s face it: If global retail were a western movie, Walmart would be the guy in the black hat. The enormity of the megaretailer is such that if it were a country, it would be the thirty-first largest in the world, ranked by GDP. With some 2.1 million employees, it is the biggest employer in Mexico and one of the biggest in the U.S. and Canada. Add to that brawn a reputation for bullying suppliers, destroying Main Streets, and stiffing employees on healthcare and other benefits, and you have a company that’s catnip for critics. And so it was no surprise in 2005 when the public reacted skeptically (to put it mildly) to Walmart’s announced plans to become a positive force for environmental and social change. Yet five years down the road—under CEO Lee Scott and his successor, Mike Duke—the company has emerged as a bona fide leader in sustainability. It has reduced both its own carbon footprint (redirecting 57% of waste in its Walmart and Sam’s Club locations in the U.S., for instance) and the footprints of many of its customers (for starters, by selling them 350 million CFL light bulbs and stocking only concentrated laundry detergents to cut down on packaging). And it has been a perhaps unlikely proponent of transparency, applying pressure for clearer sourcing of goods ranging from gold to cotton.
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Archive for June, 2010

Blowing Homemade Bubbles

The Chinese Prosumer: Different Perspective, Same Values

I’ll Have an “Old Beijing Twister”; Thanks, Colonel

Anti-Consumerism Taking Off

POV: Peter Pan(ics)

The Relief of Rightsizing

Bad News from Europe

Signs of Change: Sam Gets Sustainable

Prosumer Report

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