Consumerism: Finding the right price for objects

The information created a buzz among our French neighbor last week: the Schein and Temu platforms now represent 22% of parcel delivery managed by the Post Office. Switzerland is not spared from this wave of consumption of inexpensive and low-quality objects since at the end of August we learned that half a million packages from Asia landed in Zurich every day…

The whole of Europe seems to have succumbed to mass consumption at cut prices. Should we give in to this ultimate value? Isn’t this an opportunity to reflect on the consequences of this trend for our society and, finally, is this low price that we consider the Holy Grail the right price? Doesn’t this apparent extreme accessibility hide an unhealthy economic logic that we pay for without realizing it? Are there any solutions to escape it?

The lark mirror of the object at low prices, “design included”

You only have to go to the Swedish furniture giant Ikea to realize how apt the quote from the famous Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter was when he said: “Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. Capitalist achievement did not consist specifically in providing queens with more of these stockings, but in putting them within the reach of factory workers, in exchange for ever-decreasing quantities of labor.”

In fact, today anyone can buy a lamp, a desk or a sofa bed with unpronounceable names for a few Swiss francs. This “miracle of globalization” is indisputable. But at what cost – it is fair to say? The most obvious objection is that on the one hand, quality has often been sacrificed, to favor mass consumption of useless objects that are more easily thrown away. In the process, we ignored the durability and exclusivity that local carpentry and other human-sized companies were still able to offer us. Sometimes, because they have not been able to innovate, let’s admit it, but most of the time, above all, because they have been incapable of adapting to these low price requirements.

The real cost is to be paid by our societies

But we have been told so much history that we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by immediate advantages whose long-term consequences we have not measured. The magic of capitalism and globalization has put within everyone’s reach an infinite choice of useful and inexpensive objects and we have not been able to resist the lure of this consumer society on which we have bet everything. However, in the rush of this transformation, we have lost our ability to compete. As at a given moment we made low-cost objects the alpha and omega of our consumer society and we did not know how to produce them at home, we ended up deindustrializing ourselves, with this terrible consequence: we have lost know-how. As a result, we can imagine a shortfall in terms of this capacity to produce, to generate activity and growth. This counter-cost even goes beyond the economic sphere and affects the meaning of life of a number of active people who find themselves idle. Unfortunately, the reality is implacable: small local structures have been the main victims of a competition which is not on equal terms and whose consequences will be measured over generations. But who will be able to recover these intangible losses generated by relocation? What to do?

Rediscover the meaning of the right price

A player going against the tide of globalization, Switzerland has always stood out by selling high-quality products at high prices to its international customers. This also applies to the luxury and high-tech sectors. Which means that there is a market with customers willing to pay a premium price for differentiating values. This singular example invites us to reflect on the entire process of valorizing the object. If they knew all that this involves and all the consequences that it can entail, consumers would undoubtedly not always (unless necessary) be looking for the lowest price. They would be ready to put their hand in their pocket to buy other values. This is already the case, for example, with this public which is ready to pay more for objects which have been produced locally by companies on a human scale. A new generation, for its part, increasingly seems to be setting an example by questioning the meaning of its purchasing actions; we see this in particular through artistic content that can be obtained for free on the web, but for which some choose to pay having perfectly understood that this allows the artist to live.

There is also a whole generation that is ready to consume less and above all wants to consume better by giving meaning to each of its purchasing actions which must be linked to values ​​other than price. Finally, let’s admit that the last lever to change and regain the meaning of a fair price is in the hands of producers. It is up to the latter to know how to differentiate themselves by showing creativity but also by promoting their mode of production respectful of human and environmental values ​​which must be paid well and not just the rear margin of a profit that we imagine usurped. It is up to them to find the right price by demonstrating that an object is much more than a price-product formula and is a vector of meaning and values.

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