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09.13.2006

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9/11: Has Consumer Behavior Changed?

The Great Value Divide

Like everyone else living in America during those fateful days in September of 2001, routine, everyday life at The Hartman Group was anything but.

While adjusting to the predictable disruptions in business services (mail, shipping, telecommunications, etc.), we were also forced to cancel all of our scheduled consumer interviews, at least in the near term. Our belief in the consumer's need for privacy and family time during such duress, combined with the unpredictability of airlines schedules after the shutdown, forced our research staff into a temporary hiatus.

The profound nature of those events, along with the unexpected "down time" led to numerous spirited interactions among our staff as our analysts struggled to come to terms with both the impact of the events as well as how to move forward in a post-9/11 world.

While there were surely a variety of perspectives expressed in those dialogues, the general feeling was that "life would never be the same," that somehow our lives had been changed in dramatic ways that we might not fully realize for many years to come. And to that, there are thousands of people, of course, directly impacted who witnessed the horrific events of the day or who lost loved ones for whom life will forever be altered.

But as we began making our way back into the field to interview consumers, a funny thing happened. Much to our surprise, the early reports from the field revealed that while things seemed very different on the surface, very little had in fact changed.

To be certain, 9/11 was still very much a top-of-mind issue in early 2002. Consumer narratives stressed the dramatic impacts those events had on their lives, as well as the changing state of nature of American values and opinion. And when we began talking with these folks, things surely did appear different. We initially heard that "times had changed" (we're living in a different era) that "we are all living differently," (walking more, doing more things as a family) and that "after Sept 11th, we think differently about the world" (we treat each moment as if it may be our last).

Yet, when the time came to assess their own behavior, to articulate precisely how they were living differently, consumers often struggled. As our discussions of everyday life progressed, it became all the more clear to us as researchers that, by and large, consumers really were not living any differently than they were before the events of September 11th. All that had really changed was the meta-dialogue - the opinions and beliefs and the talk.

Nothing illustrates this point better than a quick exchange we had with a consumer living in Washington DC - in this case, a single mother raising three children. Asked if the above-noted instabilities had caused her family to live differently, she replied:

"Oh my lord, yes! Our life today is nothing like it used to be! If you would have talked with us last year you wouldn't recognize our life today. We used to go out and do things together and play and be happy all of the time, and now we spend as much time as possible in the house to stay together and save money. We try to focus on simple things, reading, things like that."

We probed further, asking for specific examples from her own life of how she was living differently. After several moments of struggling to articulate how, precisely, her life was "radically different," she remarked:

"Oh...I know! Just last week I bought this TV [in this case, a 42" high-definition television monitor] for the kids to play video games on. And while it's big and nice and all, I really wanted to get one of those flat-screen TVs with that surround sound stuff. But you know, I just couldn't justify the extra $2000, especially in such uncertain times, you know? Besides, I already have a better TV upstairs, so the kids can watch that if they need to."

And an extended analysis simply confirmed the general tenor of the above exchanges. That is, this woman's life had not changed in any substantive ways - at least not from a consumer behavior standpoint. She was still actively purchasing expensive durable goods and spending at a level well beyond her means. All that had really changed was the way she (and we) talk about ourselves - our values, ideologies and beliefs.

* * *

So why this disconnect between talk and practice; between the values, beliefs and ideology of our idealized existence and the pragmatic behaviors that constitute daily life on planet Earth?

The short answer here is two-fold: Firstly, ours is a culture that expects - if not outright demands - the expression of individualistic thought and opinion. The American tendency towards speaking our mind is so universal and ingrained in our culture that we all feel compelled to reflect, speculate and opine on all manner of events, regardless of our qualification or interest.

Paradoxically, though, we find that everyday, routine consumer behavior - how we live, shop and use products every day - is itself much too ingrained and habituated to adjust markedly to anything as ephemeral as value shifts or changing beliefs. Even though we are a nation obsessed with talking about our values and beliefs - especially how we plan to change our lives because of our values and belief - such talk really has little chance of ever changing actual behavior. Among other things, this helps explain the peculiar truism that despite all of the public dialogue surrounding obesity - the admonitions, the education and instruction - we appear to be getting fatter.

In truth, short of a robust set of powerful shocks to our institutional framework, we would rarely, if ever, expect changing consumer sentiment to express itself directly in terms of everyday, routine behavior.

Among many observers of the 9/11 events, we noticed a consistent tendency to draw comparisons between 9/11 and the events surrounding Pearl Harbor in 1941. And although we are in no position to adjudicate between the importance, severity or impact of the two events, we do know that Pearl Harbor had a much more profound impact on consumer behavior precisely because it altered critical features of daily life in a way that 9/11 simply did not.

Because of Pearl Harbor, food eventually became rationed, husbands and wives left jobs (or their caretaker roles) to work in wartime factories and vast numbers of young people entered military service. These were critically important institutional shocks that altered the nature of everyday life for years to come - and, by extension, consumer habits. Those same shocks simply haven't materialized for the American public in the years following the 9/11 tragedy.

We may feel differently. We may think differently. Heck, we may even feel a need to feel like we should behave or act differently. But at the end of the day, life for most consumers continues in remarkably the same manner as it did pre-9/11. Consider the following two answers to the question, "Is your life different today because of September 11?", collected by National Public Radio.

"Yes. No one who saw the images of the destruction of September 11th could remain unchanged from before. But I wish it was possible to choose both "yes" and "no" because in many ways my life is not really any different from before."

We believe these responses most accurately characterize the true state of the post-9/11 world from a consumer behavior perspective. This is why studying culture and immersing ourselves with the consumer is so critically important and provides far more depth of understanding than relying on survey data alone.

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