The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption

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In my earlier post about the National Geographic/ GlobeScan Greendex Survey, I had talked about the dichotomy between developed and developing countries in their attitudes towards the environment –

If the consumers in developed countries are not concerned about the environment, and the consumers in developing countries won’t back up their concern with proactive consumer behavior (recycling is very rare in developing countries), there isn’t much hope for the environment, is there?

On a second reading of the Greendex report, I discovered another (more interesting) dichotomy between developed and developing countries, in their attitudes towards consumption itself.

In the chart below I have plotted the top box “strongly agree” answers for respondents from each country on two questions related to the intent to consume. The first question is an indicator of the intent to consume less and the second question is an indicator of the intent to consume more.

- Question 1: As a society, we will need to consume a lot less to improve the environment for future generations.

Here, all developed countries have “strongly agree” responses in the range of 15%-30% (with the honorable exception of Canada at 37%), while all developing countries have “strongly agree” responses in the range of 30%-40%. A superficial reading of this data would suggest that developed countries are doubly guilty of both consuming more and being unwilling to consume less, while developing countries, who already consume less, are willing to consume even less to save the environment. Such greed on one side and such selflessness on the other!

- Question 2: People in all countries should have the same standard of living as people in the most wealthy countries.

However, the good guys versus bad guys story muddies a little if you see the responses to the second question. Here, most developed countries have “strongly agree” responses in the range of 5%-25% (except Spain at 38%), while most developing countries have “strongly agree” responses in the range of 45%-65% (except India at 33% and China at 26%). This means that developing countries want to consume more and developed countries want to continue consuming more.

If you juxtapose these two sets of responses, the developed countries seem to be saying –

Yes, we know that we consume more, but only because we can (we deserve to). We know that the developing countries can’t really consume any less than they do now (poor things), but we can’t consume any less either (really). In any case, saving the environment is not really our problem, as long as we manage to shift our factories to the developing countries.

– while the developing countries seem to be saying –

Yes, we believe that we need to save the environment, and if we need to consume less to do so, so be it. However, we are not really responsible for trashing the environment (just look at our Greendex scores!), the developing countries are. So, if anyone needs to consume less to save the environment, they should. By the way, we do want to consume more, because we couldn’t so far, and we can now, so why not?

So, I propose, somewhat sadly, that the “can consume, will consume” maxim will continue to hold for most people in most countries, and the solution to our environmental woes will lie in consuming intelligently, and not in consuming less (link) –

On the positive note, developing countries have often leapfrogged steps in the growth path taken by developed countries (mobile vs. land-line phones for instance), so there may be an opportunity for an alternate, more sustainable, path to development for India, China and Brazil. This will require that we avoid the mistakes made by the developed countries, both as consumers and as citizens. This will also require that corporates and governments come together to provide us the infrastructure we need to make the correct, more environmentally sustainable, choices.

Which makes me wonder why I ever thought that the trends towards less consumption will ever move from the fringes to the mainstream.

• India Most Green, USA Least Green in National Geographic/ GlobeScan Greendex Survey (2)
• As Consumers, We Are More Conflicted Than Conscientious (0)
• Read The April 2008 Issue of David Report: I Shop Therefore I Am (6)
• The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard (1)
• The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption Gets Its First Interview In Indian Daily Hindustan Times (7)