We Are What We Buy

You’ve heard people say, “You are what you eat.” By extension, since about 98% of North Americans aren’t farmers and aren’t growing a significant quantity of personal food, it’s easy to suggest, “You are what you buy.”

People often self-identity by their personal choices. Alongside your career and your specific interests (“I’m a teacher”; “I’m a sports nut”), you may also say “I’m a foodie,” “I’m a vegetarian,” or “I’m a beer aficionado.” These are personal choices that shape, and are shaped by by your commercial purchase decisions.

Many believe that commercialism and materialism are soul-sucking scourges that are corrupting the foundation of society. The problem is, like it or not, materialism is one of the greatest foundations of modern society. Ever since “civil society” was conceived, it has been accompanied by various degrees of urbanization, technical innovation, and “stuff” that the “haves” accumulated and the “have-nots” dreamed of. The American Dream is about one rising up like a phoenix from the ashes of your poorer, “lesser” self. According to this definition, success is defined by what you can accumulate: if so, then success in western society is defined by the things you buy and the status (and feelings) that accrue to you from those purchases.

If people just bought products that specifically (and only) filled their immediate needs, brand names would be largely unnecessary. It seems crazy to think that someone pays significantly more money for 500mg of acetaminophen with a recognizable “brand-name” label, than a package that is only slightly less recognizable – but of course, many people do.

The system works, in part, because people tend to be pretty distrustful. One of the primary reasons a “brand name” works is because it confirms “consumer confidence” that the product will meet expectations – brand communicates expectations. Acetaminophen, one would assume, is a highly regulated and mass-produced chemical that is surely identical between a store-brand medicine and a name-brand medicine. They may even be manufactured in the same facility - but one is perceived as the “value brand”, and is less trusted as a result. We pay more money for trust.

It’s not always about trust though. Think of beer – the core promise of a beer purchase is that the fizzy liquid will have 5% alcohol in it, and that will create a change in your physical state that you desire. Do you trust an expensive import to deliver a finer state of inebriation than a regional value product?

So why do people pay more for Heineken than they do for the buck-a-beer stuff? Is the product more trustworthy? Probably. Are the ingredients better? Maybe. Does it matter if the choice of yellow fizz makes one look more discerning? Likely. The core product and its core function isn't the only point behind the purchase - the consumer needs to feel that the product somehow defines them.

Manufacturers spend a lot money to make you think ingredients are better (once filtered, is Rocky Mountain Water better than Ontario tap?), or that the product will somehow make you be (or just look) better. Ironically, this is often the key difference between brand names and non-brand-name products – value-priced products don’t advertise. The “trusted brands” advertise…. which is a big part of the reason why you trust them, even though you are paying a price premium that allows them to convince you they're trustworthy. It's kind of crazy. Sam Walton’s genius with WalMart was that he only stocked branded items, knowing that the manufacturers would end up doing all his advertising for him. His business became a trusted retailer as a result.

Thomas J. Barrett, the founder of Pears’ Soap, created one of the first products that stamped the product name right into the product. Barrett knew what he was doing – he said, “Any fool can make soap. It takes a clever man to sell it.” This unique point-of-difference was the key to elevating Pears' products from another. Soap used to be sold in crates and barrels, and store clerks were asked for “two bars of soap”. Once brand names were stamped into the bars, people started asking for “Pears’ soap.” Once other manufactures caught on, Pears’ invented a translucent soap bar, a point-of-difference that was supported by established name recognition. Similarly, Ivory (who had also started to stamp their name in the soap bars) learned that filling their bars with micro-bubbles of air until they floated imparted “purity” (99 44/100 pure – ever wonder what the other 66/100 is?). The “branding” of the name into the bar made it easier for the manufacturers to talk about the unique product features – which begat advertising. Was the product any better than competitors? It’s hard to know, because those competitive manufacturers didn’t survive. It was all soap, and both products surely got people clean, but the key difference may have been that more people simply felt better about purchasing Pears’ or Ivory. That’s all that mattered in the long run.

Not-so-translucent Pears

These days, we tend to buy “brands” that directly support our beliefs. Organic food may make you feel better about your health. Chocolate is a “guilty pleasure”. You buy imported wine to entertain guests because you want them to feel welcomed and special, but you drink from a box when you’re home alone. Dandruff shampoo will keep you from being a social pariah, while the label on your shirt will accelerate your social status. Brand choices are rarely supposed to make you “just like everyone else” – they are in fact designed, albeit subconsciously, to make you unique, a palimpsest of personal expressions that define who you are - through the things you buy. Even anti-consumerists self-identify by the absence of corporate products in their lives – but they still need food and clothes, which must be purchased somewhere, somehow.

It may seem a little bit tragic, but consumerism and materialism are at the core of the human condition – for better or worse, we are what we buy.