“Love thy neighbour, as thyself”. Most religious scriptures and spiritual gurus spout gyan along similar lines. Frugal living and selfless giving were approved and admired social beliefs, once upon a time. Then came the serpent into this picture-perfect Garden of Eden — the marketeer. He cajoled, enticed and pampered the ego of consumer Eve. And slowly the rules of the game began changing. Rational thinking and evaluating came to be replaced by emotive wants and desires that required immediate gratification. Survival in the marketplace required that the consumer be led up the garden path and instigated to indulge in a guiltless orgy of spending on — himself.
Whether it was personal care products, exotic holidays or even rich chocolate cookies, subtle or full frontal, the message was all about giving in to indulgence. A plethora of similar communication was contiguous to the consumer. And Voila! we have with us the New Age consumer, who is impulsive, indulgent and narcissistic to the core.
The male Narcissus consumer, like his Greek namesake, is cast by Marketeer Nemesis’ spell and is in love with his own reflection. He is advised to look beyond the pink soaps, girly shampoos and even fairness creams. The mandate “hattaa do ya saab” and replace it with “mardon wali cream”. A typical male ritual of a simple shave and bath is replaced by bleaching the skin for that special glow, spraying himself for the Axe effect and dressing up right so that he is welcomed into the “Academy of Style”.
His female counterpart — Miss Preen — is more vigorously entangled in self love. She consumes supplements to change from a “matchstick” to a Venus-like figure. Her spirits are in the doldrums when she views her solitary pimple, she is troubleshooting with a popular cornflakes brand to get in shape and get back her “confidence”. Her derriere and legs need to be perfectly toned with a popular Bollywood Diva’s “Love Yourself” video. Her heartfelt sigh of relief tells you “how looking good just got easier”. Her accessories and laptops, like her worthy self have to be ‘size zero’. She is willing to spend that extra buck, go that extra mile and exert that extra effort , as she swings her “Zero dandruff” long and strong tresses at you. She preens in front of the looking glass and tells herself........ “Girl you are worth it.”
Do not be mistaken that this phenomena is limited to gender specific products or brands. The stretch and the canvas is vast. It envelops cars, refrigerators, LCDs and even inverters and batteries, which save you the embarrassment of losing out to your compatriots. The paint on your wall is no longer a mere veneer for protection, it’s a statement of “is ghar me kaun rahta hai?” Your address is no longer your humble abode but a statement congratulating you, that YOU have arrived.
From cookies to cornettos, from sinful chocolates to huge burgers, life is decadently sumptuous. The consumer rolls his eyes in glee and jubilantly exclaims... ummmmmm, I’m loving it.
And you as a cogent traditional consumer scratch your puzzled head and wonder, if everything is surreal, why does your sleeping beauty counterpart not wake up? It has been a good number of enchanted decades and at least now in the aftermath of tsunamis and manmade sub-prime crises, the magic of vociferous consumption should be over. So why has the magic bubble not burst? Why does the consumer still smile so beatifically through his rose tinted glasses?
The answer lies in the three aces up the sleeve of the merchant:
Ace one: The population across continents is younger, restless and demanding. Today’s consumer is a non-conformist to the core, has brazenly coherent views and opinions, lives in an iPod cocooned world, and is piously sacrosanct about his privacy. It is all about my space, my music, my rules and ME. Is narcissism so difficult to understand as his ideology?
Ace two: There is no need at this stage to wonder about the other half, that is the older consumer. As he is no longer there. Like Peter Pan, the life stage has festered, and his T-shirt proudly asserts “eighteen till I die”. And at eighteen it is all about loving oneself. Self love anyone?
Ace three: The world that this consumer lives in is festooned with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions; plane crashes and terrorist attacks; break-ups and heart breaks. In this flurry of uncertainty, there is but one thing that stays constant and that is the axis of this hurricane — I, me, myself. So what do you think? Narcissism justified?
Someone once said, “No man is an Island,” however, the iPods have falsified the claim and have created individual I-islands, where the consumer is willing to be cosseted and pandered into indulging his eternal love — solely for self.
The writer is professor marketing, International Management Institute
(IMI), Delhi