Why Modern Products Don’t Last: The Hidden Cost of Consumerism
Have you ever wondered if the sweater you bought just last year is already worn out? If so, then read this blog to know better than to blame your lifestyle and unveil the curtain that's hiding the real culprit.
Have you ever bought a product, be it electronics, clothing, or furniture, and thought that it didn’t last long enough than it should have? Well, you’re not alone, in fact, there is a consensus that the products that we are buying these days are of subpar quality than what it was in the “olden days”. This trend has been going on for decades and this resonates well with the saying “old is gold”, which in this case is the reality of the current world, at least when considering the contemporary consumer market.
We all have heard our parents saying that the almira that they bought is still more durable than any branded almira in the current market, or that the television would have still worked if it wasn’t forced to go out of service by the cable companies. Even when we buy something as basic as a piece of clothing like jeans from a particular brand, we know that the same jeans from that same brand would have lasted longer than the one you bought today.
This begs the quintessential question of why the quality of today’s products is so inferior when compared to the products of the past. Well, the short and simple answers are capitalist greed and unchecked consumerism.
The modern consumer market system
The modern world of production and consumption as we know it today is itself a remnant of the Industrial Revolution. The consumer market, where we, the consumers, are involved in a socially approved and choreographed interaction of product purchases from the producers, hasn’t changed much since the Industrial Revolution began. What has changed though is the environment where we do this interaction, from the bustling bazaars of the city centers, to glamorous malls in the downtown, to munching on a snack while lying on the bed in the comfort of your room. However, we still buy things and use them to suit our needs and wants.
In this endless cycle of consumption, we never pay heed to what others are also consuming and what they are buying, but when we do notice, we still don’t make much deal out of it. It is only when I see someone having the same product that I already have, do my interest gets piqued. And even so, that interest gets watered down with the realization of how the modern consumer market works. The fact is that in the 21st-century world, it is perfectly normal to have the same thing that thousands of people also own, and it is a reality that manifested itself from the impacts of the Industrial Revolution and we, as consumers and producers, have played our parts in this field.
The world before and after the Industrial Revolution
Before we look at how unchecked consumerism peddled the production of inferior goods, we must understand how consumer culture came into being in its modern form and its connection to the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution first began in 1700 in England and spread quickly throughout the European continent and far west to North America, It was a revolution like no other that changed the very fabric of the society. This revolution was in stark contrast to the pre-existing system of feudalism and the “cottage industry”, the latter was the system where goods were produced at a small scale and were limited to households in terms of both production and consumption. This was the system of “demand creates supply”, where people produced something only when it was needed. It is where we get the idea of commodities having a unique quality with only one-of-a-kind being in existence at a given time. This meant that if you had a vase back then, chances were that no one in the village would have that same vase. Everything was unique and served a purpose of consumption merely to satisfy basic needs and not wants, Such consumption as we know of today didn’t exist in the pre-industrial society because people only consumed something that they would only need.
All of this was going to change with the Industrial Revolution which not only impacted the factories but penetrated the very personal spaces of households and our perception of material well-being. The revolution brought with it an array of changes that were fundamental to our understanding of modern consumer culture. The regimentation of the days to a rigid system of hours created the concept of working hours which dictated how parts of the day could be dedicated to only work while other parts were left to be spent in the private sphere of the household. Most importantly however, the Industrial Revolution changed how goods are produced, as with the introduction of machine-intensive factory line production at a mass scale, factories were able to produce a commodity faster, cheaper, and in the most efficient way possible. The Industrial Revolution also invented the idea that goods were not only meant to satisfy survival needs but also to be a source of societal accomplishment by means of material possessions. This led to the production and consumption of goods that were cheaper and in abundance, so even the working class people could afford to buy. The increasing availability and affordability of goods that served beyond the basic needs and eventually became a symbol of social status and material well-being, inevitably, created the culture of consumption. This trend was beneficial to the modern Capitalist system where it gave rise to the astonishing wealth of factory owners in big cities, making it more profitable for them to open more factories and indulge in an endless cycle of production at a mass scale to satisfy the rising consumption demands of the masses.
Suffice it to say that the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism created the very idea of consumption that transcended Maslow’s survivalist needs. So “supply creates demand” as Say’s law goes, can be said to be the instrumental force behind consumerism.
The evolution of consumption in the modern era and a shift of production to the East
Now that we’ve established how consumption was a direct descendant of the innate relationship between the Industrial Revolution and modern Capitalism, we now move toward how consumerism evolved into its popularly acknowledged cynic form.
The 1950s and 1960s were considered to be the “golden age of consumerism” where goods became increasingly cheaper and the rise of the middle class made a fertile market for the producers to sell their products on a large scale with the newfound tools of marketing. If the Industrial Revolution gave birth to the idea of consumption for the satisfaction of wants, then marketing made you buy the product! Marketing became more popular and sophisticated in the 20th century when companies started promoting prolonged marketing campaigns that gave a sense of identity to the products they were purchasing. It changed people’s perception of a product from a mere inanimate object to something that they would associate with, as a part of their personality. This is where we get the concept of ‘brand loyalty’, where people will buy a product from a specific brand that they think would resonate with their personality. Moreover, changing societal ideas about material consumption being positively associated with social status would lead to a never-ending cycle of socially approved mass consumption.
Another big event that would put consumption on a global scale was the outsourcing of production to the East. As rising demands for cheap goods spiraled beyond the capacities of Western nations like the US, Canada, and Europe with their strict labor regulations, companies started looking for new locations like China, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Thailand, where they could find cheap labor and favorable tax policies. This meant that companies were able to manufacture the same products at the same price on an even larger scale due to cheap labor and government incentives, which would not only boost the already growing consumption rate in the West, but also cause countries like China, Mexico, and Thailand to develop their consumerist societies that would fuel consumerism at a global scale.
Changing trends, Cost of Production, and Keeping up with Consumerism
Now let’s jump to the 21st century, where half of the world’s population grew up knowing the names of brands and what they stood for. If marketing-led consumerism was already sophisticated enough in the 20th century to fuel a consumption spree, then now it has transcended to a new level of cynicism that directly affected the quality of products. Previously, companies relied only on marketing tools to increase their sales of products while keeping the quality of the product itself up to market standards. This was the time when big brands were starting to pop up left and right, from footwear companies like Nike and Converse to technology companies like Apple and Microsoft. It is not to dismiss that consumerism did not exist back then, in fact, we already cleared that up before, but it was a consumption that had the production boom and basic marketing strategies as its only catalyst. Companies back then knew that the sale of products would be sustainable if they made products that would work and solve the problems. This is how these new companies came into being, by creating a business around solving problems, and that is how companies like Apple brought a revolution when they created the first iPhone. It would be an understatement to say that, what we currently take for granted, was nothing short of a revolution not just in the technology field but also at a societal level.
Today we take things like smartphones and laptops for granted, but once they were brought about small revolutions in their own right. It solved peoples’ problems and created new opportunities for businesses to grow. If we go back to the first example I provided, then we’d know that it was from that period, products like the invincible Nokia phones to window air conditioners that still managed to run even if they had a pigeon living in them! All were made while keeping consumer satisfaction and product quality in mind and so they worked and lasted long enough.
This all changed as the world economy became more volatile and the inflation rates not only hit the wallets of the common people but also forced the big multinational companies to go back to the whiteboard and rethink their business strategy if they wanted to survive this era.
The solution these companies arrived at was basically to tweak how the product is made in relation to its design and how they source the components needed to manufacture the product. It is a more subtle way of saying that they just stopped trying to make good quality products and started manufacturing cheap and inferior products at a mass scale. However, bashing the companies for this decision would be a little harsh since this was also about the question of survival. In these uncertain times when events in a single year feel like it was supposed to be spread out over a decade, as such rising costs of production, increases in labor costs, trade regulations, and environmental concerns, were all important factors that directly affected how a product was made.
However, all of this happened without consumption ever slowing down, in fact as the 2000s ushered in an era of unprecedented economic growth around the world, thanks to globalization and a shift towards liberal democracies, the creation of an unstoppable and previously inexistent class, known as middle class, driven consumption levels to soaring heights. The middle class, with their strong foundation and capacity to afford goods, along with a natural consumer mindset cared only about the availability of the products they wanted and at a cheaper price. This was a problem for companies since now they have to solve the big problem of how to meet the ever-increasing demands of the consumers without raising the prices.
So producers just started making products that would reach the average viable point, which is the point at which consumer satisfaction and demand would begin to saturate. Producers collectively reduce the product quality in stages thereby limiting consumer options and desires around specific functions. This effect can be seen in the design of the products and the materials that are used to make them.
A dining table bought from IKEA in the 2000s would be made with actual wood and designed to be durable, but if you buy the same dining table from IKEA today then it is probably made of vinyl or even plastic as they qualify for a cheap substitute for wood.
This is the result of consumer engineering, which is the practice of designing products with short lifespans that would become obsolete quickly so that people would buy more and increase the profits for the companies. We see this effect even in the food industry when we go to McDonald’s, where we consume massive burgers yet remain hungry after leaving the place. This is because the Coke that is served with the burger has sugar in it which produces hunger-promoting hormones called ghrelin. And therefore, we order more food.
The effects of this can be seen in products ranging from furniture, clothing, and automobiles, to electronics that are being designed by employing techniques of planned obsolescence where the specific focus is on reducing the cost by redesigning the products or using cheap alternatives as materials for the products. In this way, the companies would have to incur for producing the product by compromising on the product quality.
So the question arises, if we all know that what we are consuming is of inferior quality than before, even with the advancement in technology, why are we still buying? The simple answer is the success of marketing.
In the modern 21st century world, marketing is not limited to just big billboards or newspaper and TV advertisements but has penetrated the everyday basic life of common people where they have no choice but to see these advertisements. The credit for this goes to social media marketing, where modern humans spend most of their idle time scrolling through an infinite loop of digital content. Social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter were specifically made to connect people, but instead, they morphed into a place where people are bombarded with constant ads with no choice of turning them off. And it’s not just social media apps but also mobile gaming apps where every time we need to resume a game we have to watch an ad. Conveniently, these are the very virtual spaces where the young generation spends most of their time and this fact is known to companies because the ads are curated for these young generations. The result is, obviously, an increase in demand for those products even if they hardly need them.
Our brains are bombarded with ads every hour, so much so, that we have accepted it as a normal part of our lives. This has had an insidious effect on human psychology where we constantly crave the product even when we don’t need it or sometimes can’t afford to pay.
Capitalizing on this trend comes brands like H&M, Shein, and Zara which specialize in fast fashion. These companies through their clever marketing techniques have targeted the young generation of people to buy their inferior yet ‘fashionable’ clothes at a cheap price. And these young consumers are not oblivious to the fact that the products they are buying won’t even last one year, it’s just they don’t care! This is because they got it for cheap and bought the product for one specific event or purpose that when fulfilled would be tossed off for good, even if the product hasn’t worn out.
Capitalism has successfully created the cult of consumerism, where modern society’s emphasis on material wealth has led to an endless cycle of consumption. We went through how the Industrial Revolution first introduced us to cheap but efficient products, where supply created demand, and how capitalist greed got us addicted to those same products by redefining our entire lives and goals around the accomplishment of material wealth. This resulted in demand creating supply, and it has never stopped since, we are left with cheap and inferior products with no alternatives because marketing has made us like drug addicts begging for more. And now, Capitalism begets consumerism which then floods the streets with inferior goods.
The “greedy” side of consumer market
Unchecked consumerism propelled an era of endless growth for companies producing products with no value. This has now taken such a sinister form that we have normalized how companies can brag about charging exorbitant prices for a ‘part’ of a product that, just 5 years before, would have sold as one product. Doing so is unpopular to the masses but doesn’t eat the profit margins for the companies, which leads to the production and marketing of more of such goods to the people. Just five or seven years ago it was assumed that the charging adapter or wired headphones would come with the smartphone in the same box, but companies like Apple and Samsung changed the reality by selling them separately with the ironic reason of reducing waste by slowing the consumption!
The current marketing of these companies can be so blatantly absurd yet hilarious that it manages us not to make them accountable for selling us inferior products. The knowledge of this is, however, known to the masses at a subconscious level, but we are unable to act on it. This created a sinister trend where companies can shield themselves with marketing campaigns that make them look like the white knight savior of the planet while displacing the blame on consumers, who by their fault and ignorance are the drivers of product wastage.
Have you ever bought a product, be it electronics, clothing, or furniture, and thought that it didn’t last long enough than it should have? Well, you’re not alone, in fact, there is a consensus that the products that we are buying these days are of subpar quality than what it was in the “olden days”. This trend has been going on for decades and this resonates well with the saying “old is gold”, which in this case is the reality of the current world, at least when considering the contemporary consumer market.
We all have heard our parents saying that the almira that they bought is still more durable than any branded almira in the current market, or that the television would have still worked if it wasn’t forced to go out of service by the cable companies. Even when we buy something as basic as a piece of clothing like jeans from a particular brand, we know that the same jeans from that same brand would have lasted longer than the one you bought today.
This begs the quintessential question of why the quality of today’s products is so inferior when compared to the products of the past. Well, the short and simple answers are capitalist greed and unchecked consumerism.
The modern consumer market system
The modern world of production and consumption as we know it today is itself a remnant of the Industrial Revolution. The consumer market, where we, the consumers, are involved in a socially approved and choreographed interaction of product purchases from the producers, hasn’t changed much since the Industrial Revolution began. What has changed though is the environment where we do this interaction, from the bustling bazaars of the city centers, to glamorous malls in the downtown, to munching on a snack while lying on the bed in the comfort of your room. However, we still buy things and use them to suit our needs and wants.
In this endless cycle of consumption, we never pay heed to what others are also consuming and what they are buying, but when we do notice, we still don’t make much deal out of it. It is only when I see someone having the same product that I already have, do my interest gets piqued. And even so, that interest gets watered down with the realization of how the modern consumer market works. The fact is that in the 21st-century world, it is perfectly normal to have the same thing that thousands of people also own, and it is a reality that manifested itself from the impacts of the Industrial Revolution and we, as consumers and producers, have played our parts in this field.
The world before and after the Industrial Revolution
Before we look at how unchecked consumerism peddled the production of inferior goods, we must understand how consumer culture came into being in its modern form and its connection to the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution first began in 1700 in England and spread quickly throughout the European continent and far west to North America, It was a revolution like no other that changed the very fabric of the society. This revolution was in stark contrast to the pre-existing system of feudalism and the “cottage industry”, the latter was the system where goods were produced at a small scale and were limited to households in terms of both production and consumption. This was the system of “demand creates supply”, where people produced something only when it was needed. It is where we get the idea of commodities having a unique quality with only one-of-a-kind being in existence at a given time. This meant that if you had a vase back then, chances were that no one in the village would have that same vase. Everything was unique and served a purpose of consumption merely to satisfy basic needs and not wants, Such consumption as we know of today didn’t exist in the pre-industrial society because people only consumed something that they would only need.
All of this was going to change with the Industrial Revolution which not only impacted the factories but penetrated the very personal spaces of households and our perception of material well-being. The revolution brought with it an array of changes that were fundamental to our understanding of modern consumer culture. The regimentation of the days to a rigid system of hours created the concept of working hours which dictated how parts of the day could be dedicated to only work while other parts were left to be spent in the private sphere of the household. Most importantly however, the Industrial Revolution changed how goods are produced, as with the introduction of machine-intensive factory line production at a mass scale, factories were able to produce a commodity faster, cheaper, and in the most efficient way possible. The Industrial Revolution also invented the idea that goods were not only meant to satisfy survival needs but also to be a source of societal accomplishment by means of material possessions. This led to the production and consumption of goods that were cheaper and in abundance, so even the working class people could afford to buy. The increasing availability and affordability of goods that served beyond the basic needs and eventually became a symbol of social status and material well-being, inevitably, created the culture of consumption. This trend was beneficial to the modern Capitalist system where it gave rise to the astonishing wealth of factory owners in big cities, making it more profitable for them to open more factories and indulge in an endless cycle of production at a mass scale to satisfy the rising consumption demands of the masses.
Suffice it to say that the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism created the very idea of consumption that transcended Maslow’s survivalist needs. So “supply creates demand” as Say’s law goes, can be said to be the instrumental force behind consumerism.
The evolution of consumption in the modern era and a shift of production to the East
Now that we’ve established how consumption was a direct descendant of the innate relationship between the Industrial Revolution and modern Capitalism, we now move toward how consumerism evolved into its popularly acknowledged cynic form.
The 1950s and 1960s were considered to be the “golden age of consumerism” where goods became increasingly cheaper and the rise of the middle class made a fertile market for the producers to sell their products on a large scale with the newfound tools of marketing. If the Industrial Revolution gave birth to the idea of consumption for the satisfaction of wants, then marketing made you buy the product! Marketing became more popular and sophisticated in the 20th century when companies started promoting prolonged marketing campaigns that gave a sense of identity to the products they were purchasing. It changed people’s perception of a product from a mere inanimate object to something that they would associate with, as a part of their personality. This is where we get the concept of ‘brand loyalty’, where people will buy a product from a specific brand that they think would resonate with their personality. Moreover, changing societal ideas about material consumption being positively associated with social status would lead to a never-ending cycle of socially approved mass consumption.
Another big event that would put consumption on a global scale was the outsourcing of production to the East. As rising demands for cheap goods spiraled beyond the capacities of Western nations like the US, Canada, and Europe with their strict labor regulations, companies started looking for new locations like China, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Thailand, where they could find cheap labor and favorable tax policies. This meant that companies were able to manufacture the same products at the same price on an even larger scale due to cheap labor and government incentives, which would not only boost the already growing consumption rate in the West, but also cause countries like China, Mexico, and Thailand to develop their consumerist societies that would fuel consumerism at a global scale.
Changing trends, Cost of Production, and Keeping up with Consumerism
Now let’s jump to the 21st century, where half of the world’s population grew up knowing the names of brands and what they stood for. If marketing-led consumerism was already sophisticated enough in the 20th century to fuel a consumption spree, then now it has transcended to a new level of cynicism that directly affected the quality of products. Previously, companies relied only on marketing tools to increase their sales of products while keeping the quality of the product itself up to market standards. This was the time when big brands were starting to pop up left and right, from footwear companies like Nike and Converse to technology companies like Apple and Microsoft. It is not to dismiss that consumerism did not exist back then, in fact, we already cleared that up before, but it was a consumption that had the production boom and basic marketing strategies as its only catalyst. Companies back then knew that the sale of products would be sustainable if they made products that would work and solve the problems. This is how these new companies came into being, by creating a business around solving problems, and that is how companies like Apple brought a revolution when they created the first iPhone. It would be an understatement to say that, what we currently take for granted, was nothing short of a revolution not just in the technology field but also at a societal level.
Today we take things like smartphones and laptops for granted, but once they were brought about small revolutions in their own right. It solved peoples’ problems and created new opportunities for businesses to grow. If we go back to the first example I provided, then we’d know that it was from that period, products like the invincible Nokia phones to window air conditioners that still managed to run even if they had a pigeon living in them! All were made while keeping consumer satisfaction and product quality in mind and so they worked and lasted long enough.
This all changed as the world economy became more volatile and the inflation rates not only hit the wallets of the common people but also forced the big multinational companies to go back to the whiteboard and rethink their business strategy if they wanted to survive this era.
The solution these companies arrived at was basically to tweak how the product is made in relation to its design and how they source the components needed to manufacture the product. It is a more subtle way of saying that they just stopped trying to make good quality products and started manufacturing cheap and inferior products at a mass scale. However, bashing the companies for this decision would be a little harsh since this was also about the question of survival. In these uncertain times when events in a single year feel like it was supposed to be spread out over a decade, as such rising costs of production, increases in labor costs, trade regulations, and environmental concerns, were all important factors that directly affected how a product was made.
However, all of this happened without consumption ever slowing down, in fact as the 2000s ushered in an era of unprecedented economic growth around the world, thanks to globalization and a shift towards liberal democracies, the creation of an unstoppable and previously inexistent class, known as middle class, driven consumption levels to soaring heights. The middle class, with their strong foundation and capacity to afford goods, along with a natural consumer mindset cared only about the availability of the products they wanted and at a cheaper price. This was a problem for companies since now they have to solve the big problem of how to meet the ever-increasing demands of the consumers without raising the prices.
So producers just started making products that would reach the average viable point, which is the point at which consumer satisfaction and demand would begin to saturate. Producers collectively reduce the product quality in stages thereby limiting consumer options and desires around specific functions. This effect can be seen in the design of the products and the materials that are used to make them.
A dining table bought from IKEA in the 2000s would be made with actual wood and designed to be durable, but if you buy the same dining table from IKEA today then it is probably made of vinyl or even plastic as they qualify for a cheap substitute for wood.
This is the result of consumer engineering, which is the practice of designing products with short lifespans that would become obsolete quickly so that people would buy more and increase the profits for the companies. We see this effect even in the food industry when we go to McDonald’s, where we consume massive burgers yet remain hungry after leaving the place. This is because the Coke that is served with the burger has sugar in it which produces hunger-promoting hormones called ghrelin. And therefore, we order more food.
The effects of this can be seen in products ranging from furniture, clothing, and automobiles, to electronics that are being designed by employing techniques of planned obsolescence where the specific focus is on reducing the cost by redesigning the products or using cheap alternatives as materials for the products. In this way, the companies would have to incur for producing the product by compromising on the product quality.
So the question arises, if we all know that what we are consuming is of inferior quality than before, even with the advancement in technology, why are we still buying? The simple answer is the success of marketing.
In the modern 21st century world, marketing is not limited to just big billboards or newspaper and TV advertisements but has penetrated the everyday basic life of common people where they have no choice but to see these advertisements. The credit for this goes to social media marketing, where modern humans spend most of their idle time scrolling through an infinite loop of digital content. Social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter were specifically made to connect people, but instead, they morphed into a place where people are bombarded with constant ads with no choice of turning them off. And it’s not just social media apps but also mobile gaming apps where every time we need to resume a game we have to watch an ad. Conveniently, these are the very virtual spaces where the young generation spends most of their time and this fact is known to companies because the ads are curated for these young generations. The result is, obviously, an increase in demand for those products even if they hardly need them.
Our brains are bombarded with ads every hour, so much so, that we have accepted it as a normal part of our lives. This has had an insidious effect on human psychology where we constantly crave the product even when we don’t need it or sometimes can’t afford to pay.
Capitalizing on this trend comes brands like H&M, Shein, and Zara which specialize in fast fashion. These companies through their clever marketing techniques have targeted the young generation of people to buy their inferior yet ‘fashionable’ clothes at a cheap price. And these young consumers are not oblivious to the fact that the products they are buying won’t even last one year, it’s just they don’t care! This is because they got it for cheap and bought the product for one specific event or purpose that when fulfilled would be tossed off for good, even if the product hasn’t worn out.
Capitalism has successfully created the cult of consumerism, where modern society’s emphasis on material wealth has led to an endless cycle of consumption. We went through how the Industrial Revolution first introduced us to cheap but efficient products, where supply created demand, and how capitalist greed got us addicted to those same products by redefining our entire lives and goals around the accomplishment of material wealth. This resulted in demand creating supply, and it has never stopped since, we are left with cheap and inferior products with no alternatives because marketing has made us like drug addicts begging for more. And now, Capitalism begets consumerism which then floods the streets with inferior goods.
The “greedy” side of consumer market
Unchecked consumerism propelled an era of endless growth for companies producing products with no value. This has now taken such a sinister form that we have normalized how companies can brag about charging exorbitant prices for a ‘part’ of a product that, just 5 years before, would have sold as one product. Doing so is unpopular to the masses but doesn’t eat the profit margins for the companies, which leads to the production and marketing of more of such goods to the people. Just five or seven years ago it was assumed that the charging adapter or wired headphones would come with the smartphone in the same box, but companies like Apple and Samsung changed the reality by selling them separately with the ironic reason of reducing waste by slowing the consumption!
The current marketing of these companies can be so blatantly absurd yet hilarious that it manages us not to make them accountable for selling us inferior products. The knowledge of this is, however, known to the masses at a subconscious level, but we are unable to act on it. This created a sinister trend where companies can shield themselves with marketing campaigns that make them look like the white knight savior of the planet while displacing the blame on consumers, who by their fault and ignorance are the drivers of product wastage.
