Drowning In Choice

Since the advent of consumerism, the range of products has increased. This means that our lives are becoming more complicated. While once we were able to go to a grocery store for bottle of orange juice, we are now able to get orange juice with added calcium, or vitamins, smooth or with citrus bits. If the consumer wants more choice, producers are now able to offer it.

Consumers are developing strategies to deal with the amount of choice available to them. As in the past, they seek their friends’ advice and compare prices. Although NaomiKlein argues that people are starting to reject brands, people are actually recognizing brands as a very important selection tool in the complex consumer environment. As shopping is taking more time, consumers are tending to stick with brands that have already provided them with good products.

Consumers also create simplicity by seeking advice. For producers, it is now important to deliver more product information to their customers. Because we live in a digital era, the importance of an informative website becomes even greater.

Aside from the range of products that has exploded in the last decade, the media output has increased as well. There are more magazines, newspapers, websites, radio and TV channels to choose from, and they carry more ads and marketing messages than ever before. A future challenge will be to find ways that specifically target and reach a specific audience. This also implies that companies will have to invest in developing new strategies that make the decision making and buying process more flexible and less complicated.

Please refer to Alvin Toffler's book FutureShock, which expressed the same idea back in the 1970s.

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I remember the day I found a shaving gel that actually did what I needed. Eureka! I had finally overcome the wall of advertizing lies - er, "subjective" interpretations!

Every brand on the shelf is the best product. Every brand is the best value. Every brand is endorsed by NineOutOfTenDoctors?. Every brand is NEW AND IMPROVED! And every brand has a secret ingredient with a name whose meaning is shrouded in marketing fog.

More recently, I decided to abandon both perfume and aluminum salts in my deodorant. There was a study ... blah blah blah ... so I started looking for a non-perfumed non-aluminized product. I found one brand that makes an effective product using neither perfume nor aluminum. There are probably others, but I had already wasted enough time finding one.

I engage in a more or less chronic quest to pierce the veil of marketing speak and flashy packaging. Drives my wife nuts. She buys shampoo that looks pretty and smells nice. I buy shampoo that has no dye and no perfume at all.

She does not feel she's at war with the Minions of Misleading Marketing, whereas I often (usually) do.

Alright, guys, I've called this meeting to find a way to differentiate our product from all the other [foo] that do the same thing as our [foo]. What can we put on the label that will make people think our [foo] is special?

It's too bad I can't walk into my store, go to the terminal, select aisle, shelf, brand from products, ingredients where products.id = ingredients.prodid and products.prodname = [foo] and not has (ingredients.name = "aluminum" and ingredients.name = "perfume") or some such thing. Nope. I'm required to walk down an aisle of 3d pop-up advertizing offering to improve my sex life, calm my nerves, bring serenity, and add 3 inches to my mortgage, scanning the blizzard of cellulose spam for the one goddamn thing I want to buy.

Okay, breathe. In. Out. Sigh. Whew. -- GarryHamilton

As an aside, what did you need in the way of a shaving gel?

• I needed something that would a) lubricate well, b) not dry out quickly, so I could take my time shaving, c) not subject my nose to hours of residual olfactory assault from perfume.
• For years I had done what everyone else had done: used products perfumed with a scent that a) I liked, b) I thought others would like. I had forgotten that there was a time when perfume at all hurt my nose. In 1986 a friend pointed out that (remember those Bell Labs educational films?) the scent was borne by particles propelled by volatiles, and that these particles were, in fact, an irritant. His suggestion: for ninety days switch everything to an unscented variety. Laundry soap, softener, shampoo, conditioner, shaving foam, bath soap, deodorant, the works. I was sixty days into the experiment when my sense of smell switched back on. Now I can't go back. Perfumes hurt my nose again, but I can smell a gas leak minutes before the people around me.

That used to plague me; I seemed to need hard-to-find combined features for tough beard, sensitive skin, fragrance free, etc., and most products irritated my skin and/or didn't soften the beard enough and/or I'd get cuts, etc.

After a long, long time I discovered something very interesting, that works better than any gel for me, no promises about for others. You know how, with disposable blades/razors, they quickly get dull, and worse, get nicked, which causes them to draw blood, and this means that consumers need to endlessly buy replacements, which was such a great biz situation that "sell the blade, not the razor" is now a generic biz/marketing strategy.

Well, I noticed that, if the blade gets even duller yet, the nicks in the blade stop drawing blood, and it can be used permanently without replacing it (if I use it right after showering, so the skin and beard have softened somewhat -- and it helps that I do a quick once-over first with an electric razor, which at least in my case, shortens the beard but isn't a close enough shave, thus I finalize with the old disposable razor).

It's not as close of a shave as is a brand new blade, obviously, but the brand new blades weren't working for me anyway, and the shave with the rather dull blade seems to work quite well enough for me. And I get the smug satisfaction of sidestepping the whole disposable economy nonsense on at least this issue (although that was not my original motivation).

On a more orthodox note, rather than any gel at all, I noticed that simply using a good skin moisturizer did a much superior job of softening the beard to prep for shaving than any gel I'd tried, with only quite small amounts needed, with the only downside being that I'd need to leave it in place maybe 3-5 minutes before shaving.

• Hah! I'm not alone. I, too, have found this to be the case. A good (unscented) lotion is what I now use when shaving with a blade. Don't tell the manufacturers. By the way, every hear of Williams waterless shaving cream? Came in a tube, like toothpaste. No soap. Good for camping. Wonder if they still make it. -- gh
• I uses Ivory soap and a dull blade in the shower. My beard could be licked off by a stout cat, but "disposable" razors tend to last me +6 months each. -- EH