Are We Buying Things or Buying What Their Price Says About Us?
Generally, when prices rise, demand falls. But some things work the other way around. The more expensive luxury watches, designer bags, and luxury cars become, the more people want them.
In 1899, American economist Thorstein Veblen called this “conspicuous consumption” in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class that is, things are bought not for their use, but to display status. Such goods are now called “Veblen goods.”
In 2008, researchers from Stanford and Caltech had people taste the same wine with different price labels. The same wine tasted better when it had a $90 label than when it had a $10 label, and activity also increased in a part of the brain associated with pleasure. The taste was the same; only the price had changed.
So the question arises: Are we buying the thing, or its price? And ultimately, what are we trying to show, and to whom, through that price?
The moment we wear an expensive brand, a sense of reassurance arises within us: “Now people will look at me differently.” That means the real function of that thing is not to fulfil our need, but to manage how others see us. And whoever determines their own worth through the eyes of others needs something new and more expensive every year, because those eyes keep changing.
Social media has intensified this competition even further.
Expensive things, cheap life. The height that could not be reached in life begins to be compensated for through high-priced possessions. Behind every conspicuous purchase lies an incompleteness that says, “As I am, I am not enough.”
Convenience has meaning only when it makes some meaningful work better. Therefore, the question is not whether something is expensive or cheap. The question is whether my work is worthy of it, and whether this thing will help me in my work or merely help me show myself.
If the brand and the price were both removed from your most expensive possession, would you still want it just as much today?
Sources
Plassmann, H., O’Doherty, J., Shiv, B., & Rangel, A. (2008). Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. PNAS, 105(3), 1050–1054.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0706929105
Veblen, T. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class.