Marketing professor Benoît Heilbrunn deciphers for BFM Business this “French cultural exception” which has made purchasing power the main theme of all elections for decades.
Election after election, social movement after social movement… For almost two decades the question of purchasing power has been the national obsession. In this legislative campaign, this concern is even breaking all records. The theme of purchasing power is cited first by 58% of French people according to an Elabe survey for BFMTV and La Tribune Dimanche, far ahead of security (36%), immigration (33%) or even retirement (18 %).
Logical after more than two years of inflation where the French lived to the rhythm of oil price hikes and price increases on the shelves.
After unemployment in the 1990s, or the insecurity of the early 2000s, purchasing power is therefore the major problem that politicians must resolve to hope to convince voters.
But what if there was no solution or response likely to satisfy the French? This is the question posed by Benoît Heilbrunn, professor of marketing and philosopher at ESCP who has just published a brilliant essay “What the myth of purchasing power hides from us” (Editions de l’Aube). Because if the problem of unemployment, for example, is resolved by creating jobs, how can we satisfy the expectation in terms of purchasing power when, according to the author, “the desire to purchase has replaced the need to purchase” for more than 50 years?
Thus, according to INSEE, purchasing power has increased in France by 8% over the last 10 years and even by 14% over 20 years. The author proposes for BFM Business to analyze the emergence of a phenomenon that is at the crossroads of economics, psychology and politics.
• BFM Business: Do the French have a good appreciation of their purchasing power and prices in general?
Benoît Heilbrunn: All the surveys clearly show that, contrary to what one might think, the French do not know the price of what they buy (except obviously for recurring purchases such as coffee at the bar or a pack of cigarettes). Most are unable to accurately give the price of the products they have just purchased when leaving the checkout. They are therefore incapable of evaluating inflation which depends on good knowledge of prices. Purchasing power is therefore a psychological fact that is easily manipulated by politicians and players in the commercial world. Furthermore, there is a growing gap between perception and reality. Even if we can contest the purchasing power measurements made by INSEE, the discrepancy is glaring.
With rare exceptions, purchasing power has been growing steadily since 1945, by an average of around 1% per year. Similarly, the share of energy – which is much discussed in the media – has been relatively stable for 30 years, at around 9% of household budgets, while the share of housing has grown significantly over this period. The question of purchasing power is therefore essentially psychological and symbolic. It is a propaganda tool used at leisure by players in the commercial and political world who play alternately on fear and reassurance. It is also the only common discursive point of all the lists present during the legislative elections.
• Why has this question taken such a prominent place in public debate in recent decades?
B.H.: First of all, it should be remembered that purchasing power is one of the cultural exceptions. It is only in France that this notion permeates social and political debate. Even in the Nordic countries, steeped in Protestant culture and very sensitive to the question of fair prices, purchasing power does not appear in public discourse.
There are several explanatory factors. Basically, it becomes a central topic of discussion depending on the economic situation, that is, when society perceives itself as being in a situation of economic crisis.
Looking at the occurrence of the term in the press, we can observe a first peak at the end of the 1920s due to the crisis of 1929, then from 1973 following the first oil shock and finally, in recent years due to the fact that We hear about crises all day long.
The cyclical resurgence of this expression is fueled by media fears and fantasies such as that of downgrading. Added to this are two major events: on the one hand, the deindexation of salaries in 1983 following the freezing of prices and salaries. It fuels a fear among employees about the increase in the cost of living. On the other hand, I think that the ideology of purchasing power has been very largely reinforced by the 2009 law on the modernization of the economy, which in fact authorizes distributors to deduct back margins from their sales price and in fact legitimizes selling at a loss (repealed in other countries such as England).
The rhetoric of the brands has since then been structured around the question of price in a country where supermarkets are overwhelmingly dominant (hyper and super represent more than 70% of mass distribution). It is moreover E.Leclerc and Intermarché which have benefited the most from the panic around purchasing power maintained jointly by the commercial and political world, that is to say brands which have fought against the rise in prices. price their hobby horse.
In this way, these actors direct the social discourse on the question of low prices, promotion and good deals by positioning the consumer as a victim of the market system, which can only be enriched by the violence of market relations and a distrust of actors, particularly industrial ones.
• When did this notion of purchasing power arise?
B.H.: In fact, she is not really born. It is one of those vague, if not gelatinous, notions that permeate social discourse without anyone knowing what it is about. It was in fact Adam Smith who introduced this notion in his Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations published in 1776. It is therefore at the heart of the birth of political economy. Except that Adam Smith does not approach it from the angle of the price of goods, but from the angle of work.
According to him, wealth does not depend on the accumulation of material goods, but on the power that one can exercise over the work of others, what he rightly calls the value of work, a notion that will be widely taken up by Marx. Purchasing power means the capacity to command the work of others to obtain the conveniences and pleasures of life. We understand from then on that the advent of this notion is concomitant with an ideology that is set in motion at the time and that I have called the tyranny of well-being, namely that the search for material, social and psychological comfort becomes an obsession that guides most of our desires and actions.
• You say that purchasing power is a “purchasing desire” which can never in fact be satisfied, why?
B.H.: We must understand the addictive nature of power and therefore the vicious circle of purchasing power. Power is cumulative in the sense that it always calls for more power. The desire for power is an endless abyss. And it is this mechanism that structures the consumer society. When the notion of consumer society appeared at the end of the 1960s, we noticed that the term “needs” gradually disappeared from the discourse and was gradually replaced by that of “desire”. However, the characteristic of a desire is that it cannot be satisfied, hence this endless race which obviously explains the practices of overconsumption that we must now stop for environmental reasons, but also for psychological reasons, to the extent that the accumulation of possessions and wealth does not make us happier.
• What role does mass distribution play in this political confrontation around purchasing power?
B.H.: Its role is decisive, because it allows it to hijack the political debate on consumption by taking it to the field of price. This role is reinforced by the media over-presence of certain brand owners who effectively stifle any debate on a necessary consumer policy, by reducing it to the question of consumer power which is in fact artificial because this so-called purchasing power means absolutely nothing if not bluff!
• Does the citizen consumer perceive the political scene as a supermarket and the parties’ offers as products which he changes according to his desires according to those which will offer him the most satisfaction?
B.H.: This is exactly what happens, except that the person buying does not necessarily take on the role of citizen. The rhetoric of low prices maintains a mechanism which is the quest for the good deal, the low price, what in economics we call the search for the windfall effect.
In other words, the individual manages his purchases by trying to optimize his utility based on resources that he considers increasingly limited. This microeconomic reading which establishes the figure of thehomo economicusvery often criticized, is in my opinion the only real contribution of economics to understanding purchasing mechanisms. This logic reinforces the selfish dimension of the buyer as Adam Smith had already shown and obviously fuels a mechanism of atomization of society against which we must fight by making consumption an issue of deliberation and collective struggle. The rhetoric of purchasing power anesthetizes us, by closing us in on a little self tied to its bubble of comfort.
• What place is there for the general interest in an atomized society where each individual only seeks to improve their purchasing power?
B.H.: The focus of social discourse on purchasing power precisely betrays the resurgence of the notion of consumer, a figure invented by marketing to describe an individual who, unlike the customer, has no attachment and no presumed bond of loyalty to with regard to a supplier.
He acts by prioritizing his particular interest over the general interest. It is therefore the resurgence of a paradox that Adam Smith very well highlighted, namely that human beings constantly combine a natural sympathy towards their fellow human beings and are concerned about their well-being, while being resolutely selfish and trying to put his own comfort first.
It is no coincidence that the ideological and cultural counterweight that we have produced to counter this maximizing selfishness is none other than individual responsibility, which allows us to taint our purchasing actions with guilt. In a sense, the rhetoric of purchasing power obliterates the sovereignty of the citizen who consumes by shifting the focus to particular interest, when it is precisely a question of rethinking the general interest.
Which means that it is important to promote a more deliberative democracy that allows us to collectively ask the question of the commons, of the goods necessary to ensure a decent life for everyone, of the infrastructure expenditure necessary to live better, in short of everything that is missing, on the right as on the left in the proposals of the political parties, obsessed as they all are with the balloon of purchasing power.
Interview by Frédéric Bianchi
