Do Retailers Know Us Best?
December 22, 2008
by Rusty Pritchard
Three pieces of writing occupied my mind this morning. All are relevant to the storm of consumption that strikes the nation at year’s end. One came in the annual double Christmas issue of The Economist: a disturbing review of brain science research into the psychology of shopping, much of it proprietary. Corporations have sponsored numerous studies in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see which parts of a consumer’s brain respond to which products or brands. The Economist cites an academic researcher:
“We are just at the frontier of the subconscious,” says Eric Spangenberg, dean of the College of Business at Washington State University and an expert on the subtleties of marketing. “We know it’s there, we know there are responses and we know it is significant.” But companies commissioning such studies keep the results secret for commercial reasons. This makes Dr. Spangenberg sure of one thing: “What I think I know, they probably know way more.”
In our most basic (and base) appetites and desires, we are known intimately by retailers, and they use that knowledge to manipulate us. For many people, being known leads to enslavement.
What a contrast to the way we are known by God!
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? (Galatians 4:8-9)
As Joanna and I were praying this morning, she prayed something that came from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sermon “Transformed Nonconformist”. We looked up the quote later:
Everywhere and at all times, the love ethic of Jesus is a radiant light revealing the ugliness of our state conformity.
In spite of this imperative demand to live differently, we have cultivated a mass mind and have moved from the extreme of rugged individualism to the even greater extreme of rugged collectivism. We are not makers of history; we are made by history. Longfellow said, “In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer,” meaning that he is either a molder of society or is molded by society. Who doubts that today most men are anvils and are shaped by the patterns of the majority? Or to change the figure, most people, and Christians in particular, are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority opinion, not thermostats that transform and regulate the temperature of society (from Chapter 2 of King’s Strength to Love).
I don’t doubt that most of us who claim to be believers (including me), if subjected to a brain scan of our responses to brands and shopping opportunities, would respond almost exactly as the world does. Part of the response comes from just being human.
Does a response that comes from the spirit as well as from the gut make a difference to our consumptions decisions. So far, there is no magnetic resonance imaging device to track our spiritual responses to commercial culture. Can we cultivate a spirit of transformed nonconformism that controls our merely human responses? Can we be the hammer and not the anvil, the thermostat and not the thermometer?
Retailers think they know us; we think we are known by God. For Americans, the holiday shopping season may be the best test of who knows us best.
Rusty Pritchard is a natural resource economist and the editor of Creation Care magazine.
Comments
Got something to say?
