You’re heading to your local grocery store one day, and you walk in at the same time as a lady who’s just parked a top-of-the-range BMW. Well-dressed and carrying one of those luxury designer handbags, she’s a few steps ahead of you down the aisles and, in a moment of indiscretion, you can’t help glancing at her trolley… and It’s full of own-brand products, special offers and promotions.
Coming the other way, down the same aisle, is a young man who looks like a student. His trolley is half empty: a punnet of organic strawberries and a single fair-trade avocado.
What on earth is going on here? Have consumers lost their minds?
No. What you’re witnessing is the everyday expression of one of the most profound shifts in consumer behaviour of the last few decades: the bipolarity of markets.
It’s a phenomenon that is radically rewriting the rules of the game in the world of mass consumption and today we’re going to explore it from the trenches of the fresh produce world.
Discover in this episode the concept of Masstige, the evolving pyramid of consumption, the consumer mental accounting, Veblen’s conspicuous consumption, the two-factor theory of Frederick Herzberg and a lot more.
Welcome to a new episode of Freshconomics Podcast.
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