Price or desire? Consumers or corporation driving forces?

www.intellectualtakeout.org

Julio F. Campos

With excerpts from the Guardian "How formula milk firms target mothers who can least afford it"

Recently I was discussing the role of price over the consumerism that is collapsing our planet's systems.

Some argued that the low prices are the more important driving force behind what people consumes, or better, how much they consume, and since corporations only produce to attend the consumer demand, the former would have a more impact of resources depletion than corporations.

The basis of that logic is that consumers consume because corporations offer low prices products.

I argue that the issue is a bit more complex and deep than that.

First of all, both consumers and corporations are guilt for the environmental degradation. To define who’s more important is irrelevant.

Prices under the consumer perspective.

The first step is to dismember the consume into its two ramifications:

1. The consume of needed goods, those that one buy because it needs it do live.
2. The consume of superfluous goods, i.e., the consumerism, where people buy, independent of price and usually from the functionality as well.

In the first situation, for the majority of the population, poor population, the product price will be the driving force. However the issue here is not if he’s going to buy it because it’s cheap, but how much he will buy. Under budget constraints, one will buy just what he needs to fulfill its needs.

In the second situation, there is a shift in consumer behavior. The product price won’t define if he will buy the product. The price will only define how much he will buy. Even if they don’t need it.

This is the root of consumerism when people buy what they don’t need due to a psychological drive, not economic ones.

Is the consumerism that is driving the resources to collapse.

Consumerism can be defined as a ideology to encourage the constant increase of consume .

So we have two distinct consumers problems that must be analyzed separated. What is consumed by real need want what is not.

But no one just wakes up and decides that he needs to buy something that he doesn’t need, there's something else here.

Corporation driving forces

Psychology marketing is the main tool that corporations have to instills into the consumer the idea that people need to buy.

“The corporation produces because the consumers want to buy”

That’s an egg/chicken problem. Of course, if  a product is available, someone will be willing to buy it. But what came first, the product or the willingness to buy? One wont buy what doesn't exists.

At the beginning of this text, I exposed the argument that lower prices are the driving force. One argument to support this concept is the increase in consume by the poorest, which now, in Brazil, are able to consume much more than years before, due to an increase of credit availability (leading to unplayable debts in the future) and lower prices.

That’s a reality and can’t be denied, however, the problem of the consumer behavior towards  non-priority goods, electronics, clothing, etc… remains.

There is no perception that enough is enough to the consumer.

And it doesn't seem to be an issue for the corporations.

Some argue the lower prices are to blame, not the corporation’s (but who set the prices?).

“People will always choose the lowest price”

Lower prices always drives the consume?

Recently a interesting case appeared that exemplifies the flaw on believing that the low price will drive the consume.

“Formula milk companies are continuing to use aggressive, clandestine and often illegal methods to target mothers in the poorest parts of the world to encourage them to choose powdered milk over breastfeeding, a new investigation shows.” (C) The Guardian.

Recently Nestlé, Abbott and  Mead Johnson were caught on a marketing scheme focused on poor families around the world with the single objective to make mother stop breastfeeding their babies, and buy their milk formula. They are no giving the formula always for free.

“In return for that, if a patient decided to use formula milk, I’d recommend their product and tell them ‘Nestlé is good’ or ‘you should use Nestogen’ and so on. They are very persuasive, they make it sound like their products are very good for the mothers and the babies.”(C) The Guardian.

Despite the fact that breastfeeding is not only the best feeding for babies, it’s also free. So Nestlé is actively trying to induce the women to stop providing a healthy, free, top quality nourishment for their babies and replace it with their expensive industrialized product.

“ They have an active campaign to get mothers to use formula, even when breastfeeding is still an option: Ghi Jayona” (C) The Guardian.

Bottom line, the "good" corporation, worried with the babies health is not stimulating the use of the cheaper, healthier, alternative, but the most profitable one.

So, is consumer the only one to blame if they buy whats it’s being sold? No, it is not.

What about the corporation’s psychological marketing saying that but their products will be good for them.

The consumer won’t buy what is not offered to him.

But who is offering those products? The government?


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