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We want a personalized life. Adjusted. Completely in line with what we like, what we enjoy, and without anything that we think is unnecessary, uncomfortable, or that could harm us or prevent us from enjoying one of our many daily meals, or the daily pleasure of a simple coffee on a fantastic terrace in a square.
An idealization of such a life ends up being nowhere near what is “real”. Life presents challenges, disappointments and even very difficult choices.
When we have the opportunity to choose something, or to choose between scenarios, hypotheses, or even the main course we're going to have for lunch, it's almost like perfection in itself.
The largest percentage of people don't have the opportunity to choose anything. They don't have the opportunity to choose to live in a house, they don't have the opportunity to choose what they're going to eat, if they're going to have anything they can call food that day, or if they want to have the chance to choose between receiving treatment for any illness they have, because there may not even be that possibility, no matter how cheap the treatment is.
But today I'm not going to dwell on this for the sake of my reflection. I'll just focus on the small percentage of people who have some freedom; who can choose between several options.
When we have more than two options in front of us, or presented to us, the likelihood is that we will only consider one to be good, and the others to be inferior. Or we might even be led to think that of the twenty options we have, not one of them is really good.
The development of distribution networks, and a society that is increasingly used to having its needs met... or even created! Have you noticed that every “new” product that appears on the shelves of supermarkets, or even on online sales platforms, presents the product or service to us as something that will solve a problem we didn't even know we had!
And that can be called marketing! Being able to sell something that we never thought we would want or desire.
That first step is just one. Then we are presented with various options... And normally, the more “customizable” a product or service is, the more we are “charged” for that customization. And we think we're the luckiest people ever to have bought the product or service.
But maybe all we need to do is choose between two options. The third option is only put to us so that we are “forced” to opt for the most advantageous one for the seller or trader.
This old technique has been used for many years and in the fast-food industry of the biggest chains. You never see just one choice between similar products. And it all started with the need to increase sales.
As such, the XXL concept was created.
There would be a size S, and a size M. Many people opted for the smaller size because they didn't feel compelled to choose the LARGER one. But by adding a third product, size L, sales of the medium size increased exponentially. The solution seemed to have worked wonders. A fourth XL option and even a fifth XXL size were created. Resulting in higher product sales. This is because by buying larger sizes, consumers thought they were paying less per unit of “volume” or “weight”, for example. Which is true. But at first, when choosing the size of their menu or meal, they would only consider what they normally needed to satisfy their hunger. But nowadays, what makes us choose is that we only think about the “savings” we're making by opting for the cheapest by weight or volume... Consuming more, or wasting more than we wanted.
Higher sales figures, higher company profits, more sustained egos (ours) and a lot more waste.
A society that sells ideas, concepts and pushes us not to even think in our own heads, where the seemingly almost infinite “choice” of products, goods and sizes gives us the feeling of freedom, when in reality we're really stuck with what's put in front of us!
And in this case, three is less than two.
I hope you enjoyed this little reflection for today. I confess that I thought it would be lighter and easier to read, but as it was written throughout today, it ended up being much more serious and a bit too heavy for a Saturday, don't you think?
Thank you for your time and attention.
Bem Hajam🍀
Free image from Pixabay.com
