A new backlash against consumerism?

I urge you to take a listen to this fascinating conversation that was broadcast yesterday on NPR's On Point, about Americans' spending and saving habits during the current recession. http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/08/how-we-save

One of the points the guests (mostly professors at business schools) kept making is that we may be seeing a more long-term adjustment to greater frugality and less extravagant spending - a trend that may outlast the current downturn and become a "new normal" for the average consumer. It was also suggested that today's consumer cares more than ever about corporate and environmental responsibility, and that companies that want to get ahead will market products as "fair trade," "all-natural," "sustainable," and so on.

The most interesting observation, though, was made by John Quelch, a professor of business administration at Harvard. He said there has been a trend recently, not just toward buying less because of financial need, but toward spending less than one's income level would allow (and less than that income level would have, in the past, predicted). Most importantly, this trend started to appear, not when the housing market took a nose-dive or when people started to lose their jobs, but in 2005, when the economy looked great to most people. Is there a quiet anti-consumerism backlash afoot? Might people's decisions about consumption and how much "stuff" (whether cheap or expensive, affordable or not) to buy actually be part of a real sea change in the American outlook? If so, it wouldn't just be an economic change or even a social change. It would be a spiritual transformation.

- KPE