Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels, 205.5 cm × 384.9 cm (81 in × 152 in), Museo del Prado, Madrid
Today, I have cancelled my subscription to Amazon Prime, a service that I've enjoyed for several years and which might return in the near future. Subscriptions are one of those temptations of contemporary existence which only reach our consciousness when they raise their price suddenly to an important proportion or because they somehow deceive us. Well, in this case, getting consciousness was unavoidable. Not only had Amazon duly informed all Spanish consumers of the coming-up price race which would become effective in Europe this September, it was also heavily discussed in all types of media.
Media reactions to Amazon Prime's price increase
Interestingly, the discussion did not dig deeper into the real price structures, such as different courier service systems, taxes and legal structures depending on the European country, but solely focussed on the recent practices of large companies to use big data for the personalisation of prices, in other words, making people pay more who have more resources, more urgent needs or less care about prices. As always, the danger of big data came under scrutiny.
The resuming lemma was that Amazon knows us better than we know our self. I shall only mention here, that profiling people for professional reasons, and even having bought data from companies such as Amazon, I am not very convinced that big data is really the way to know anybody at all. What is true, big data, especially services from Google and Amazon help to predict mass behaviour. In this context, I am confident that the probability of success of the global COVID-19 campaigns was quite predictable, in the same way the weather is. But, if there is any danger for societies in these practices, the danger is a very different one. On the one hand, it might lead to a new form of illiteracy and split societies into those who understand the meaning behind statistics, big data and prediction, and those who don't, making the latter vulnerable to all type of deceits. On the other had, people could end believing that big data are really able to profile individuals, which will distort the perception social justice. This is already happening, and it is much more probable that Amazon will be used to make up a fake profile of you, and judge you on invented, potentially, ill-disposed and malicious grounds, rather than understanding the depth of your hidden motives and darkest secrets. This would certainly be an interesting topic, but since it is largely discussed elsewhere, I shall focus on two aspects that are not mentioned so often: targeted announcements and the psychology of "buy now".
Targeted announcements
There was a time, perhaps six or ten years from now, when YouTube started sending me a few, four or five announcements which were so off from the general products and services around and attracted me in an extraordinary way. It was the first time in my life that I considered announcements potentially being interesting and useful. As a consumer, I belong to these people who buy over two decades a washing powder, convinced that it is Ariel, when it actually is not. Ariel in my youth was the only washing powder whose name I could withhold because of the Disney Film Ariel the Mermaid, which I had seen neither, but whose songs I knew and loved. Actually, it would be interesting to analyse if there are any other announcements besides washing powder, anti-bloating remedies, sanitary napkins, strangely never tampons or sanitary products for men, chocolate in winter, ice-cream in summer, alcohol all year round, never marihuana or tobacco, and the never-ending advertisements of cars perfumes which are usually presented in a row (three to five brands one after the other). The other publication I could withhold was the 2013 Christmas pub of Limón y Nada, a Coca-Cola product, under the title "Un palo". The truth is, I didn't know what or who was announced until now, and I had to look it up for this article, but I remembered the spot very well.
With this, it is not my intention to state that I am special or that publicity would not affect me, when I find the time to see them and not only analyse them through academic research. My point is, there was a time when YouTube reached me in a very different way and motivated me to subscribe very different services. One of the effects was that we donated money to the German female astronaut in order to support their trainings. But suddenly, these announcements disappeared and the ever annoying questions about brand awareness returned. Guess for which products? Right, cars and perfumes. What an obsession with cars and perfumes our society has!?
In my opinion, Amazon is not really able to do any targeted announcements. You will only be spammed with things you have just bought. In an average, I buy new shoes from an international brand every 3-4 years, and yes I do this through Amazon because their logistics favours me. Shouldn't they send me a targeted information about 2-3 years after my last purchase? Instead, they bomb me with exactly the same shoes for a few weeks after any purchase...
Now, coming back to the dangers. It is true that a growing number of companies adjust their prices according to the customer profile. Just like the tailor's sons who bragged before the Lehrmeister (instructor) and had to draw on brute force it seems as soon as consumers show their satisfaction with a new platform, they will be abused and must appeal to a higher power to defend their rights or become more resourceful. Well, this is why many of us have several accounts, and with a bit of wit some are even able to design their purchasing profile themselves in order to get better prices. This is nothing new, and I still doubt that big data will drastically improve a company's benefits in the long run. But, for the moment, I would recommend any of my clients to try. From the consumer point of view, this only affirms my true interest here, the absolute absence of consciousness in consumer behaviour.
Wouldn't we actually not expect prices to be targeted? I mean, one of the most often heard words of some clients is their pledge for a price discount on grounds of being "good clients", "old friends", "not having the money right now", or what else. Price personalisation is satisfying the hidden need for feeling recognised and special by people. Obviously, if you make a "special discount" to friends and alike, all others will have to pay more. Nothing new under the sun!
"Buy now" consumerism
The price increase in Spain was heavy, something around 36%, and I was very thankful it was not justified by the conflict in Ukraine, COVID-19 or climate change. Until 2018 Amazon Prime costed €19, since then €36, and starting from September 2022 €49. Surprisingly, back in 2018 the discussion was not really relevant, even though the increase was more. Rather they explain that the amount of services added the package have increased, general inflation and specific costs of some services. Even though, I only used Prime Video and originally subscribed for the sole reason that deliveries resulted cheaper that way, I fully understand and support their reasoning and, as already stated in my introduction, I might return to their service. My reasons to end my subscription is a different one; taking consciousness.
In my opinion, the price was still be reasonable compared to other services, such as HBO, Netflix and similar, and I did enjoy Amazon Prime's billboard. The interesting thing is that many of my friends share one account for streaming services within a "family" pack, whereas my husband and I pay an individual account each. Certainly, there are reasons for this arrangement, but over all those debates I started wondering: "Did we really benefit so much from having two separate accounts? Did I really need Amazon Prime, when I was more than satisfied before this service existed? Wasn't the "cheap" delivery more a trick to achieve client fidelity than actually making things easier for me?
Two experiences during COVID-19 helped me to shape an opinion. One was that while I increased my purchases from Amazon throughout the last two years, mainly substituting supermarket products, I also discovered many new small shops who had set up online sales due to the pandemic. Further, I had already realised that Amazon purchases were distorting my search engines. There I was very much aware of targeted pricing. Many of the shops I had known before did simply not appear in favour of showing results from Amazon first. This is not a big issue for me, since I belong to a generation who had grown up with completely absent or malfunctioning search engines. I have still a few resources for finding something out of the algorithm.
A year ago, I was also worried of environmental issues and researched the Amazon case a little. A bit counterintuitive, but not so much to my surprise, the unique organisation of Amazon's logistics ensued a very positive environmental balance. These studies might be paid by Amazon or biased in some other way, but there are a few points that indicate, at least from a theoretical point of view, that Amazon's storage and distribution approach must have advantages, especially thanks to big data!
Sales Platforms as modern Wishing-Tables
But being something good should not limit us in our intent to make it even better, shouldn't it? I realised that the way online platforms in general, but Amazon in a very specific way, shape our behaviour as consumers. In a certain way, sales platforms have become a modern form of Wishing-Tables. What they do is not really new, it's the same procedure a seller at the local market uses to incite you to buy something additional when you are looking for something in concrete, making it available and easy to buy. For example, when you go to your local butcher, you usually find also some tomato sauce or herbs or similar products that you need to make good meat just next to the cashier. You do not need to go to another shop extra for this purpose, and usually it is only a fraction of the meat price, which means, you might have also the money at hand. Credit cards have boosted this effect even more. "Buy now" buttons have been cheering our impulse purchases ever since they were invented. I might not be the best customer for this marketing strategy, but it certainly works with anybody.
In a certain way, sales platforms have become a modern form of Wishing-Tables.
The Land of Cogaine by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Public domain), c.1567, oil on wood, 52×78cm in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich via Wikimedia Commons.
What I most like about Amazon is there wish lists. It enables me to add products and compare prices later, discuss them with friends who are more experts in one or the other thing. In a certain way, I felt that Amazon helped me to make my purchases in the most conscious form ever. The lack of adequate filters for these wish lists finally made me return to my old spreadsheet purchase lists, anyway. The question is, in which way a subscription was motivating to buy something that was not necessary. Amazon had enhanced the "Buy now" button, not only with their "One-click" function, (which I personally have not used very often, perhaps twice), but also with their information on "one-day-delivery" and "free return policy". Free returns are in many cases imposed by the law anyway and other company have also very short delivery times, usually announced with some big sign on their pages informing about 24h-delivery and such. But having a date next to the buy now button, including the information that you can return it without cost is substituting the most charismatic shop assistant.
Subscription cancelling distress syndrom
Ease of purchase could also have been a reason why we had two accounts, my husband and I. But it was not our case. I used also to purchase things through a third persons account for specific reasons. Having a fluid communication strategy, one-day purchases are no problem, independent of the accounts you use. The reason was much more scandalous; the psychology of cancelling a subscription, as described as the FOMO factor, Fear Of Missing Out, by Julia Glum. Again, retention marketing goes back at least to the 90' and human psychology a few millennia more, no big data conspiracy. It is also true that I am not a millennial and was educated in a double-dyed old money culture, which means, spending, or rather possessing anything that is not required is considered a waste of resources and, in a certain way, a kind of blasphemy threatening one to be mistaken for a new rich or social climber. There is nothing bad about belonging to any social group, and in general, one has not much of a choice. Yet, as arrogant or stupid these kinds of un-reflected thoughts might sound, there is some truth in them. The formation of Europe's aristocracy has been largely based either on the Christianization of Europe through the large network of monasteries and cities with cathedrals, re-enforcing local chiefdom, later the conquest of Jerusalem; in short by killing and trade monopolies. Only in future generations, when a noble family was already well established, they felt more propelled to justify and consolidate wealth and power by visibly promoting some socially promoted moral values, such as helping the poor through charity, glorifying a peoples cultural value by caring for heritage and art, or increasing everybody's access to the social ladder by supporting trade efforts through infrastructure or legal and social inventions such as the banking system.
Seen from this angle, vieux rich and new rich rather seem be two different stages in social group's life cycle than actually distinct types of people. Since the generation known as millennials this has almost extended to anybody in society. When we speak of millennials as "digital native", we do not refer to their capacity to understand binary logic, problem-solving skills or even their programming knowledge. The term rather refers to script kids, able to download an app for almost anything and to subscribe to a ton of services that exist in an even better version as open source and for free. With "digital natives" at the command one might think that Windows and Macintosh are only sold to people over 60. But this is not the case. There is not much "digital" in regard of our European natives. Passive and un-reflected consumption has rather become the trend, not only limited to the Generation X and those coming after them, but extended to everybody. It seems that nowadays not only the new rich are social climbers, but social climbing has become a way of life for our society as a whole. The question that comes to my mind is: "When everybody wants to climb, where are they climbing to?". There is a certain logic in this social development. After the Mediaeval understanding of society as a pyramidal system in which everybody owned a social "place" and occupied his or her social "space", democracy's most seducing argument, at least in the American style of democracy, has become the promise that anybody could climb up the social ladder. This does not only imply the possibility to earn more money and to amass more things, but also to enhance social status, reputation, life expectancy and well-being. Today, status is no longer expressed by the glory of one's deeds, or at least the consequence of it, the importance of the goods one possess. Social success is measured in terms of one's capacity to spend money, or even waste resources. The sad thing about this is, that it is actually the most anti-democratic idea ever. In some way the promise of wealth through the democratic system subverts it. In the mind of many democracies is just a contemporary form of Gold-Ass.
In the mind of many democracy is just a contemporary form of Gold-Ass.
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Social justice requires individual responsibility
Democracy is about governance and power. Its original idea was to give power to everybody, that everybody might shape one's own destiny and take part in the becoming of a state. But this requires paying the costs, taking on responsibilities for one's actions, becoming more conscious, aware and educated by helping also others to become more independent within one's personal limits. The boom of charity organisations is a clear sign that we are further away from this goal than in any Bourbon state. Returning to Amazon's subscriptions, I ask myself what type of marketing strategy could help people at large to become more aware about responsible consumption and support them in their effort to create real values instead of collecting useless stuff for showing off?
I don't have any interest to defend Amazon or any other service. But the amount of so-called consumer information on the news that alerts people about their privacy, consumer rights, and risks of the digital world, without any mention of the consumers' role in those dynamics astonishes me. The media have become our Cudgel in the Sack, punishing apparent misbehaviour. It seems that mugging is no longer the deprecated behaviour of the greedy and the drug addicted. TV shows openly explain that lying, stealing and killing are the necessary evil if one wants to become rich. Washing one's image white afterwards is the normal procedure, apparently accepted by the larger society. But what can be learnt from the old fairytale? Eleonore Storch's included a goat as explanatory device in her version. Stith Thompson remarked that this might go back to old Chinese tales, but this is not relevant here.
The lying bleat goat, as it is called in the German version, is the most interesting element of the tale of The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack. Apparently the problem of the father and his three sons is that their living space is too small, they live in a limited and scarce world which does not provide sufficient pasture to their goat. This is their primary impulse to go out into the world to search for more resources, better herbs in this case. The strange thing about the goat is that it is easily satisfied and only starts complaining once returned home. Elisabeth Noel in her book "Die Weisse Katze" reminds us that the trick of the goat is to blind us for the transcendent dimension of life, which converts us in ever hungry beings, that become dependent and fall back into childishness. It is this narrow focus on optimising the immediate purchasing process and the bragging about our wealth, that make us likely to become victims of even larger predators. How little have progressed since the 16th Century's ideas of The Land of Cockaigne? What will we need in order to sea wealth in its plenty of all the dimensions of the creation cycle?
The media have become our Cudgel in the Sack
Snuffling tobacco: Eleonore Storch (right) with her friend Christine Juliane Mahne. © Illustration: Henschel Archive
Concluding, in a certain way I have to say thanks to Amazon for helping me to overcome my subscription cancelling distress and becoming more aware of my own psychological flaws that convert me into an unconscious consumerist. I am not confident that this is the right way for a new form of creation cycles in society, but rising prices is certainly not the worst of business strategies.
Thank you, Amazon!
