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04.05.2004

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Authenticity As An Antidote To Our Moral Ambivalence With Luxury Consumption

Given our historical love affair with all things capitalism, it is sort of ironic that most American consumers (as well as marketers and analysts) are markedly ambivalent when it comes to the subject of luxury consumption. On the one hand we all love our nice stuff. Which is another way of saying that we believe firmly in the material and ideological rewards of capitalism. After all, who among us doesn't prefer those plush, leather seats up in the first class cabin? Or the warm, contoured feel of cashmere?

And at the same time, we hesitate. Suspicious of the potential for pretense and snobbery associated with luxury purchases, we ask ourselves, sometimes even subconsciously, "Do I really need to spend $250 on my toddler's overalls?" "Is it really okay to buy a third car?" "Should I really be dropping $70 on a bottle of vinegar?" It's a truism in American society that the worst impressions are made by those obviously trying to impress, and we are acutely aware of that potential in the luxury arena. After all, we're not idiots; we know that the $70 vinegar and $250 toddler clothes aren't really ten times better than the "average" products. So what happens if others figure out how much we spent and decide we were just trying to impress them with our lavish ways?

Lurking beneath the surface of our love/hate relationship with luxury consuming, there is an even deeper morality; a morality evidenced by our very choice of words used to describe this style of consuming. Look up the word "luxury" in a dictionary and chances are you'll find some version of "that which is beyond what is necessary." Ask yourself "necessary according to whom?" and you have the source of morality at play here. While we surely value our cultural heritage of equal parts freedom and individuality, we just can't shake the Protestant part, that pesky alter-ego on our shoulder who's constantly reminding us that others are watching and they just might be judging.

As individualistic and free-spirited as Americans may appear, deep down we crave the comfort and approval emanating from regulation by our peers and society. Think about it, nobody really aspires to unbridled maverick excess in the form of, say, Ted Turner, Donald Trump or Leona Helmsley. Sure, we may occasionally covet certain elements of their lifestyle and their individuality might occasionally capture our imagination, but we surely wouldn't want to be like them. Do we really desire as friends people who show so little restraint or taste; such little respect for our collective way of life? In part, this is why our culture always satirizes these folks as sad, lonely, idiosyncratic caricatures. Like Mr. T, Donald Trump makes a great cartoon character. But while it might be fun to watch him on TV or to ride in his helicopter, you might not be so happy if he married your sister.

All told, it is precisely this deep-seeded ambivalence - this tension between our desire for the material rewards of capitalism (on the one hand) and our desire to be perceived as socially acceptable and immune to judgment (on the other) - which we believe is the defining feature of modern consumption practices and luxury consuming specifically. And not surprisingly, it is this ambivalence that is also responsible for the continued hand-wringing and anxiety about luxury consumption expressed in the writings of analysts, journalists and social critics.

But, while these critics have been busy crafting their diatribes against luxury consumption, consumers have been quietly at work crafting a functional antidote to their ambivalence, an antidote that has had - and we believe will continue to have - a profound impact on marketing arenas.

Authenticity: Our Own Personal Jesus

Fortunately (for manufacturers, marketers and retailers) recent developments in consumer culture have paved the way for a fertile cultural environment that promises continued involvement in luxury consumption practices. The foundation of this fertile environment is, of course, authenticity. Specifically, in a consumer culture historically characterized by such profound moral ambivalence, our late 20th century preoccupation with authenticity has allowed us, for the first time, to more freely explore our "luxurious desires." Suddenly luxury consumption became much easier to contemplate, so long as the end result was something authentic. In this, we find that authenticity is our soul salvation - the ideal antidote to our collective moral ambivalence with so-called luxury consuming.

While it often sails underneath our collective radar, authenticity's brief legacy now encompasses most domains of contemporary existence. The unforeseen price premiums associated with fast casual's dramatic ascendancy in the restaurant sector go unnoticed as we wait in line at Panerra for our "authentic" Portobello & Mozzarella Panini experience. Pottery Barn, Anthropologie and Restoration Hardware - the holy triumvirate of the contemporary shopping arena - have leveraged authenticity to rekindle our interest in expensive versions of "things from our past," and "things from real places." Heck, in the case of Restoration Hardware, we find an entire retail concept built on nothing other than the premise of authenticty - the idea that we are willing to pay substantial premiums for objects that (a) we used to own, (b) that remind us of things we once owned or (c) that remind us of how we once lived (or imagined we lived). We may openly mock our neighbor as he motors by in his Porsche - replete with his young, mid-life-crisis girlfriend in the passenger seat - but we do so from the safe confines of our '04 Nissan Murano, taking quiet solace in the fact that if necessary, we could traverse open fields and streams in our search for andventure and enlightenment. Finally, we note that those overpriced club-level seats at the ball game seem ever-more justifiable when we are considering a park like Camden Yard or Safeco Field, where we can enjoy the luxury of watching baseball "as it was meant to be played - under the stars and amid the everyday clamor of urban street life." Wherever we turn, authenticity appears an easily available - and most desirable - option.

But all of this raises the question, "why authenticity?" And, related, "how authenticity?" That is, what is it about authenticity that suddenly makes it okay to pursue more fully our luxury consumption habits and how is this authenticity operationalized?

We suggest briefly that authenticity is the ideal antidote to moral ambivalence based on it's ability to imbue distinctions with a sense of naturalness - a sense that the distinction in question (which often demands a price premium) is justified because it represents "the natural way," "the way things are supposed to be done." Deep down most of us recognize (even unconsciously) that most distinctions in consumer goods are, at best, artificial and, at worst, arbitrary. We all know, for example, that it is purely happenstance that many prefer shoes by Manolo Blahnik and accessories by Prada. Likewise, we're aware of the possibility that our interest may be driven largely out of appeals to status and, hence, appear motivated out of pretense. But should we opt for specialized shoes or accessories that are construed as authentic (Doc Martens, Levi's, Timberland's), the distinction becomes much easier to justify, much more palatable, much more, well, real.

Also embedded in notions of authenticity - especially in the case of fashion - is a sense of utility and functionality. Objects like a fur coat, a Rolls Royce or a Rolex watch may prove challenging to justify, yet somehow it's okay to pay similar premiums for an Arc'Teryx Alpine shell (with the comfort of Gore-Tex XCR), a Hummer or a Suunto Stinger diving watch because these all perform important functions in one's daily life. (Or, to be more accurate, such objects offer the potential to perform important functions. As the 98% of SUV owners well know, the goal isn't so much to drive the SUV across rough terrain as it is to imagine that you could do so, if absolutely necessary. In reality, most SUV owners are content to traverse the open terrain of only the grocery store parking lot.)

All told, then, authenticity is crucial because it allows us to naturalize distinctions that are otherwise arbitrary, in the process imbuing them with an internal sense of morality in their claims to "rightness." For example, one cannot seriously argue that there is any single "right" way to make Parmesan cheese. As something we humans fabricated out of cow's milk, enzymes and a little curiosity, Parmesan cheese is as artificial as golf, silly string and Life-Savers, so it proves difficult to claim the stuff from a Wisconsin factory is superior to the stuff from Argentina or, for that matter the stuff from the basement of the local cheese maker's club. Yet, when we assert that Parmesan cheese originated from a specific place (Parma, Italy) and a specified stylistic tradition (Parmesan Reggiano), we also establish foundational claims to authenticity. Suddenly, a wholly arbitrary distinction is imbued with a distinct morality, a sense that this is the way things were intended to be done. Likewise we are now provided with a strong justification for (a) significant price premiums, as well as (b) our desire to splurge on authentic luxuries. It is in precisely this fashion that we proclaim authenticity to be our own personal Jesus, our salvation in an era of ever-increasing ambivalence and contestation.

Part I >> Part II >> Part III

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