I just read some comments to the latest David Report bulletin called “I shop therefore I am” in “The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption”. It’s a year-long book-as-a-blog experiment in why we choose to consume, or not, written by India based Gaurav Mishra. In a very clear and comprehensible way he is putting together a couple of important trends that in one way or another describes how our consumption pattern are about to change:

- From conspicuous consumption to conscious consumption.
- From brand-consciousness to background-consciousness.
- From synthetic to organic.
- From mass-produced to hand-crafted.
- From global to local.
- From short-term to sustainable.
- From fashionable to durable.
- From valuing things to valuing insights.
- From fitting in/ standing out to being.
- From buying more to buying less.
- From doing more to doing less.
- From multi-tasking to down-shifting.
- From buying to sharing/ exchanging.
- From owning to experiencing.
- From having to giving.

Sounds quite attractive to me… What do you think?

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Andra bloggar om: shopping, konsumtion, trender, kultur

I’m proud to announce the new David Report bulletin called “I shop therefore I am”. In this issue we are looking into the world of consumer culture from different point of views; ethical, social, political, economical and humanistic.

Shopping has turned into a lifestyle. We consume as leisure and a way to pass time. But at the same time many are realizing that the power of consumption is stopping us from finding true and sincere happiness; and that shopping often works as a substitute for something that we’re missing in life. At what point does the accumulation of material goods become less fulfilling and more stressful and overwhelming?

Our consumption grows in the same pace as our economic growth. Studies shows that in hundred years we consume eight times as much per capita as today. Can our globe take such a strain? The power of consumption is being questioned and there’s a change in attitude and way of life. We don’t want to be consuming goofs, we want to be considered aware and responsible. It is all about WHAT we buy and WHAT we choose to invest in, the world we live in will be the result of those choices.

In the future consumption will be more about experiences and services than things. Perhaps giving will be more important than having. Are the companies, who survive on our consumption, prepared for this transition?

The David Report bulletin no 9 “I shop therefore I am” also offers insight on the subject from strategist Kristina Dryza and Zen-Buddhist Sante Poromaa. On top of this an interview with Mathilda Tham, guest professor at Beckmans school of Design. THIS LINK takes you to the new bulletin (and yes, it’s free!).

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Andra bloggar om: kultur, shopping, konsumtion, handel, hållbar utveckling, csr

Next Friday, April 4, issue nine of the David Report Bulletin will be released. The title will be “I shop therefore I am” and it will concern future consumerism and consumption culture. Among other things you will be able to find interesting texts from Kristina Dryza, freelance strategist and designer and Sante Poromaa, teacher at The Zenbuddhist Society in Stockholm. There will also be an interview with Mathilda Tham, guest professor at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm. Here’s a short introduction text by Sante Poromaa:

“In the future luxury goods will be methods that bring us back the power of our own attention: the power to choose ourselves what we want to notice or not. And there lies the true luxury of the future, to be able to resist shopping and still be happy.”

To be sure to get a notice when “I shop therefore I am” is released please go to the David Report home page and sign up for a subscription. And the best of all, it’s free!

Image by Barbara Kruger.

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tags technorati : david report future consumerism future shopping trends future consumption

Andra bloggar om: david report, trender, framtid, shopping, konsumtion, design

Tomorrow November 24th is the international Buy Nothing Day (November 23rd in the US). More than 65 nations around the globe are involved. The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Vancouver back in 1992 and has subsequently been promoted by the Canadian Adbusters magazine. The describe the Buy Nothing Day like this; “it isn’t just about changing your habits for one day” but “about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste“. According to me it’s an important day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption. As I have mention before it’s impossible to just go on and buy more and more useless stuff. It’s about time to really think about our consumption and try to buy less but better products. I hope that this day of austerity could lead on to a more open-minded attitude towards materialism and the wear-and-tear society we are all part of.

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tags technorati : consumerism buy_nothing_day adbusters materialism

Andra bloggar om: en köpfri dag, konsumtion, miljö, prylar, politik, moral

Here follows a text from designer and cultural nomad Satyendra Pakhale about his exhibition called “We can’t afford to buy CHEAP things”.

Having been invited by Ms. Nicolette Naumann to curate and design the Personal Shopper exhibition at Tendence Lifestyle 2007, I feel it’s indeed high time for us to review our way of living in general, to rethink our patterns of consumptions and evolve a new fresh concern for sustainable living.

I would like to take this opportunity to search and discover objects with relevance and ask questions about these issues, such as “what is sustainable living in today’s context?”. And therefore to make us aware of the underlying issues relevant for us these days. To review our way of living, looking at our consumption patterns, habits and above all at our global industrial culture.

By critically looking at all the industrial output and consumption patterns, we can hopefully eliminate what is not needed and focus on what is really essential. Therefore put great emphasis on quality rather than quantity, and direct our resources on cultivating a culture of creation rather than a culture of consumption.

We also need to start a fresh debate on so called “sustainable design”. For me the most sustainable design is the design that will not be trashed, discarded for generations to come. It is a design that becomes a cultural icon. Something that is well conceived, that does not exclude socio-cultural needs besides utilitarian needs, that is well crafted and well made, with a gentle relationship to nature. Ultimately, every product is a result of human touch and a healthy relationship with our natural environment. Good design speaks a universal language that does justice to both tradition and innovation.

I will try to demonstrate my concern for these issues by selecting products, objects and hopefully systems etc. for the Personal Shopper exhibition that create my personal landscape, from the galaxies of products and objects chosen from around the world.

In order to display an intelligence of the future and to cultivate sustainable living we can’t afford to buy CHEAP things.

Satyendra Pakhale was also one of the boosters at the recent Designboost event which I organised in Malmö some weeks ago.

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tags technorati : satyendra pakhale tendence sustainable design

Andra bloggar om: design, satyendra pakhale, hållbar utveckling, miljö, ansvar

Buy Less Crap started the other day as an reaction to the RED campaign founded by Bono (as I wrote about here a couple of month ago) and they offer people to donate directly to RED’s beneficiary The Global Fund among others without consuming. Buy Less Crap brings forward that shopping is not a smart response to human suffering around the world. It’s a tricky question. Because people ARE consuming. We will not be able to change that in the short run. Unfortunately they buy a lot of crap. But consuming is a powerful tool. Tim Power who is a co-writer here at David Report made a clever comment to the original post about RED and I would like to bring it forward in full:

RED is a fantastic example of what can happen when consumption meets social responsibility. I have always believed that one of the tools of individual empowerment given each and everyone of us upon birth or immigration into an economically liberal democratic society is the power of the political vote, but equally important is the power of the ‘economic vote’.
Each and every Dollar (or Euro of whatever) we spend on a product or service is a vote for (or against) the process, quality, belief system or form of what we buy. Every dollar we spend is a vote - you use what you buy to empower what you believe in! Go Bono.

Thanks to Josh Spear.

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Andra bloggar om: shopping, etik, välgörenhet, filantropi, hjälporganisation

What do you do if you feel that you have been treated really bad by a company? You start a blog - telling the world what kind of bad people they are!

“Nothing says “I love you” like being held hostage on a frozen plane with the man you love, 99 strangers, 4 other people you happen to know, 4 screaming babies and 3 rambunctious kids running about, nothing but chips and soda for sustenance, faulty power, unreliable direct TV and overfilled sewage system for 11 hours.”

The above is the headline from the blog Jetblue hostage. It’s run by Genevieve and she was a passenger on JetBlue #351 on Valentines day along with her boyfriend Charlie. They were en route to LA for Valentine’s day before they ended being held hostage for 11 hours on the frozen tarmac at JFK. She is now looking for other hostages of Jet Blue.

Brand Experience Lab is reporting about the Jet Blue issue as well:

“Expect to see more of this story in the future! But remember, if you’re not delivering on the story you tell, someone’s ready to start a web site to trash you!”

Viva consumer power! The world will never be the same again.

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Andra bloggar om: flyg, jet blue, konsumentmakt