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09.22.2010

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Consider Choice

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.  
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.
- Neal Peart

As consultants, marketers and analysts in the US, the idea of choice is implicit in nearly everything we do. The close of almost any speech, presentation or analyst briefing always features some version of the now-tired maxim: What consumers really want are more choices.

Duly noted.

But rarely in our busy schedules do we ever pause to think about what “choice” means, much less about higher order notions of choice—Choice with a capital C. If choices are something we all desire and something we deploy routinely as we make our way through our lives, one would think we would ask more questions than we do about this curious idea, this important marketing tool, this routine behavior.

Questions like: Where did the idea of choice come from? What does it mean to have choices? Are some choices inherently better than others? How do ideas of choice affect our perceptions and behaviors?

Below are our observations on choice that have recently occupied our thinking and our work.

Observation Number One: Our choices often skew the way we perceive the objective world

Nearly all consumers believe that “they are busier than ever” and “their lives are more hectic than ever” and most attribute these perceptions to the belief that they and/or their spouses are working “much harder” and “longer hours” than generations to come before them.

But while consumers’ perceptions that their lives are more hectic or busier than ever are perfectly valid, what the aggregate data tell us is that they are not working longer hours, and likely not working harder than ever.

Consider the table below summarizing data presented by the Economic History Association. In this case, we’ll let the data speak for itself:

Put most simply, we’re working less than ever and have more free time than ever. Lifetime work hours have been on a continuous, downward trajectory since the data were first collected in 1880, and the projections paint an even rosier future for those of us lucky enough to live until 2040. While one might be inclined to dispute the source of these particular data, our own investigation revealed multiple different data sources, including data from the Census as well as the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), that arrived at very similar conclusions.

So while we are certainly entitled to our beliefs that our lives are “more hectic than ever” or “busier than ever,” those perceptions are not related to structural trends in work hours. Rather, these perceptions and beliefs emanate from the choices we make as to how to spend our (ever increasing) free time. Perhaps we are busy shuffling our children around to numerous activities that we decide are important. Maybe we are busy building brick ovens in our back yard because we want to cook “better” pizza. Some of us have apparently decided that it is important to cook a Julia Child recipe every day for a year. The bottom line is that these are choices rather than the result of objective outcomes of the social organization of labor and/or the economy.

So when we hear the maxim “consumers have less time than ever,” the proper response would be to suggest that it is not the case that they truly have less time than ever, it’s more about how they choose to use that time. And in fact, we can expect to have dramatically more leisure time at our disposal as time passes.

Observation Number Two: As a society, we typically believe that our current collective choices reflect a general trend toward a better way of life. This is a world that is improving upon the mistakes and naiveté of generations past. This is the way the world should be.

Farms allowed us to live in cities. The capital generated by factories and commercial enterprise in urban areas allowed us to create a suburban landscape, which most decided was much more attractive, cleaner and safer. Once in the suburbs we encountered large kitchens stocked with appliances and packaged foods, bringing affordable convenience to the masses in the 50s and 60s.

This was truly a watershed moment, for who in the 1800s could have imagined a life of such convenience, where easy-to-assemble meals could be stored in cabinets and refrigerators.

But then our minds began to wander, and we discovered organic and so-called “better for you” food products. Suddenly we began to wake up and revaluate our past and current food choices. But even organic was not, by itself, enough. For here we stand at the apex of the trend toward all things fresh, local and artisanal.

The fascinating thing is that within each era we never stop to question the failings and limits of our own current choices and preoccupations; to speculate as to how unusual, flawed or downright silly our current choices will appear in the future. You see, processed foods only became problematic when seen through the lens of the future looking backwards.

If processed foods are now held in contempt, one wonders what our young grandchildren will think about our preferences for fresh food, local tomatoes, our backyard chickens and our artisanal cheeses? Will these be the much-maligned choices of a population with too much time on its hands? Or, conversely, will our grandchildren chuckle at the idea that we only had time for a few artisanal cheeses and backyard chickens, while they have the luxury of tending to their own customized ecosystems with a control pad?

How could Don and Betty Draper have ever known that their behaviors and choices would someday be mocked by a future in which people “knew better” than to drink scotch at 9 am and smoke in the office?

When choices move from the personal to the collective, over time we tend to imbue such choices with a sense of morality. We mask the fact that they are still choices. Is it healthier to not drink and smoke in the office? Probably. Yet nobody ever questions the current choice to constantly graze in the office and eat at our desks, many of which are adorned with candy bowls to invite conversation.

Observation Number Three: Within a consumer culture, choice allows us to move from the realm of the physical into the realm of the imagined—what we like to call the “Reimagined World.”

The Seattle Kingdome was once a marvel of the modern age, allowing sports events to continue regardless of the unpredictability of weather patterns. But then we decided it wasn’t good enough. The Kingdome didn’t provide the baseball experience we wanted. So we tore it down and built another park that more resembled an “Old-fashioned” ballpark—complete with a retractable roof. Safeco Field represents a reimagination of what we believed previous generations experienced and desired. Baseball as it should be.

We used to opt for large, homogenous houses in the suburbs, but that desire has been reimagined as we seek out craftsman bungalows in urban areas that are forever in need of restoring. And even once the kitchen is remodeled, there’s always a need to do so again a mere few years later. What else do we have to do with our excess leisure time?

Our past preference for luxurious carpeting has been reimagined as an authentic desire for wood floors—like they used to have in pre-1950s America.

The once hallowed grocery stores trumpeting convenience and selection are now being reimagined as smaller-format specialty stores and farmer’s markets.

Because of the role of choice, we are no longer constrained to a world in which our choices are about physical things (the stuff). Increasingly we have the leisure time and the financial resources to live within whatever world our imaginations (and choices) can invent.

Observation Number Four: The more we think critically about choice, the more we become aware of the constraints that (unnecessarily) limit innovation.

The notion of fine dining in an airstream trailer once seemed absurd. Now it is de rigueur. Is such a premise more “evolved” compared to the fine dining restaurants of the 1950s? Who cares. Besides, all that really matters is that we have the extra time to follow these roving diners around the city.

And to our critics who might rightfully complain that our example above is too arcane for most to relate to, why not consider our bizarre fascination with the most foundational element of our world:

Water.

Water is critical to sustaining life. In fact, most ancient cities were located near water because without it, people die. In order to move away from waterways, our ancestors spent significant effort building infrastructures to ensure that we didn’t have to harvest our water from wells and rivers using buckets. For as most know, water is very heavy and it’s hard to get much done as a society if you have to spend 1 or 2 hours a day moving water around on backs and feet. Just ask the Romans with their complex aqueducts.

But somewhere along the way, drinking water out of complex systems via a faucet became boring so we chose to spend the last 20 years dutifully packaging our water back into smaller buckets (bottles) and moving it around the world on airplanes and trucks. Who would have ever guessed that choosing to drink water this way could be so much fun? Who needs Rome when you can choose from France, Fiji and Arkansas all on the same shelf!

But then some of us decided that perhaps we were having a little too much fun with our choice of water consumption styles. Now many are arguing that the old-fashioned way of drinking water out of the faucet might be more fun after all—especially if we decided to squirt it through magical screens known as filters. But the choice is by no means unanimous. This is why a waitperson will frequently ask whether you’d prefer tap, bottled or sparkling water when being seated at a restaurant.

What we were once lucky to have is now reimagined, with choice being the sole goal. The point of course is that once we began to think about our habit of drinking water from a faucet as merely a choice among many options, we opened a wide pathway for breakthrough innovation.

Suddenly the most basic of all commodities in history became a multi-billion dollar industry and based around choice and imagination.

Observation Number Five: Choice need not be rational

Let us turn our attention to San Francisco, which is at once one of America’s most beloved, frustrating, diverse and contradictory of cities.

During the August 2010, the two biggest stories reverberating in the food world concerned (a) the potential of severe restrictions on fast food meals offering toys to children (i.e., restricting Happy Meals) and (b) the excitement and media buzz surrounding American Cupcake’s new “Red Velvet Fried Chicken.”

One story was about a moral choice. A choice to protect adults and children from making so-called bad choices at fast food restaurants. And at that very moment, the city was enamored with the endless possibilities represented by free choice. In this case, the desire to create Red Velvet Fried Chicken: Brined chicken breast soaked in red velvet cake batter, dredged in toasted, crumbled bits of red velvet cupcake, deep fried and topped with cream cheese-infused mash potatoes.

This is not a story of good vs. evil, of David vs. Goliath, of betrayal and revenge.

This is a story of choice.

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