Useless or Not?

$1.2 trillion is how much Americans are spending annually on retail goods and services they absolutely don't need. The US is seeing upward consumer movement because marketing is motivating and engaging buyers to work towards goals that don't always revolve around bread and milk. When talking about Australian retail, a telling statistic, indicated that 40% of retail spend, ends up at Woolies and Coles. Not much room at those stores for motivational buying other than the expensive baked beans with ham.

Australian retail is in the doldrums, especially if you are listening to people like Gerry Harvey and the large retailers and with short term figures not indicating any change in direction, it seems we may need some help from our cousins across the Pacific, when it comes to loosening our saving attitudes. Seems we have learnt how to save again and once the dollars are in the piggy bank, we are loathe to spend it, except for shopping at Coles and Woolies.

While the US consumer enjoys blowing dollars on ancillary "stuff", the US economy seems the better for it and the spend on jewellery, alcohol, gambling, fast cars and chocolate is as stimulating to the economy as it is to the ego. Dan Ariely, Professor at Duke University points at marketing to jolt us out of our consumer doldrums and to give the retail economy a boost from a new kind of capitalism based on consumption of things people don't really need but things they are motivated to work for.

His article in the Harvard Review pointed to our increasing leisure time and the need to fill it with things that motivate us to work towards them, when he said, "let’s not discount the role of aspiration and the desire for incremental luxuries, things we want and don’t necessarily need. They can fuel productivity and thus have a valuable function in our economy."

Dan asks us to consider our current consumer environment: "Multiply the desire for thousands of products of varying levels of utility: iPads, leather couches, crystal martini glasses, cars, garden gnomes. It’s like having thousands of little motivational speakers hovering around us."

Gerry Harvey would love to be one of those motivational speakers but we have another fly in the ointment of retail recovery and that's our high dollar, which is attracting people who would normally spend an afternoon at Harvey Norman, to now spend time on the web scouring for deals that Gerry used to spruik. Yet there is hope on the horizon and the marketing angle for the retailers should involve the aspirational, the motivational and creating the desire to accumulate things that have more meaning than just function and that speak to our emotions. Something that Woolies and Coles would have trouble doing for loaves of bread.

If Apple can do it with a few select products then surely the retail industry has the ability to reconnect with their customers on a much more basic level of want and desire, without having to challenge each other on bottom line pricing. $1.2 trillion on non essential "stuff" should be all the motivation Australian retailers need to see the future.