The Tribes as Consumers [2008]
II’ve been immersed in our economy research for most of this month – just finished the report yesterday. It's called The Time of the Hunter.
The study involved media analysis, six focus groups [based on six of the 8 tribes] and a survey-based update of Windshift’s mood and household economic indicators, which I've developed over the past eight years.
It has thrown up some fascinating findings – especially to do with brand perceptions and consumption, which the subscribers are very happy with – and personally I’ve been pleased to find how well the tribes have done in explaining the nature of the economic changes we’re seeing in New Zealand.
So, partly because I don’t have another original thought in my head and partly because I’m hoping you’ll be so interested in this you’ll order up a presentation immediately or tell everyone you know to subscribe to the shared survey I’m planning on the 8 Tribes as Consumers, here’s an excerpt from my report:-
“When costs rise, there’s no avoiding the differential effect of personal income. And while the tribes themselves do not necessarily belong to any one income strata, the centre of gravity of each tribe does sit within a low medium or high income band.
At low income levels there has been far greater exposure to the effects of increased living costs. There is considerable economising going on in this sector of society [covered by our Otara and Papatoetoe tribes].
These are households that even in good times, live up to the limit of their incomes and feel the pinch at the end of the pay period. There is evidence of people taking on second jobs or longer hours at work to make ends meet.
There’s also greater fear of street crime and robbery in the poorer suburbs.
In what passes for the middle income zone in New Zealand, the more provincial Balclutha and Raglan tribes both seem relatively well adapted to a feast and famine kind of existence and have simply instituted their usual famine strategies to cope with the current situation - more hunting and scavenging, more sharing of costs, more gardening, less extravagance, more efficient use of resources, more self-sufficient behaviour.
To these people, the value of time and money are about equal so they are happy taking time to save money.
The big shift, especially for the more rural Balclutha tribe members we interviewed, is in the cost and thus the use of motor fuel.
These are inveterate travellers who would think nothing of driving two hours to get take-aways or drop in on a friend. Most of their new strategies are responses to the vastly increased costs of such behaviour – use of motor bikes, waiting till there’s multiple reasons to travel, staying home.
However the Balclutha tribe in particular isn’t going without its treats – not with swap-a-crates so reasonably priced.
By comparison when we interviewed members of the “simple life” sub-group of the Raglan tribe we found them very smug in their proactive adaptation to tough times – their self-sufficiency and rejection of consumer “opiates of the people”.
These people tend to have a values-driven, high touch lifestyle that involves a very deliberate attention to the mechanics of life, an emphasis on family and community and a rejection of undue frivolity. They were putting in more vegetables and scavenging for recyclable goods to sell on TradeMe, but they weren't wanting to compromise the lifestyle balance and personal relationships that mean so much to them.
At higher income levels, we found an urban intellectual Grey Lynn tribe who, though having no strong economic need to do so, have embraced a plain vanilla Papatoetoe/Balclutha frugality as a kind of moral imperative - though with a dispensation for overseas travel to places of culture.
The cut-backs the Grey Lynn tribe make are designed to save money AND resources – saving power at home for example, reading the labels, watching the consumer shows on TV for tips, taking the bus to work.
There’s concern for how other people are coping and the ever-present Grey Lynn guilt at their own relative fortune.
And then there’s the achievement-oriented, often highly mortgaged North Shore tribe. They do love their bargains. Don't expect them to pay full price for anything anytime soon.
One outstanding fact about this tribe: when provided a range of 140 major brands from almost every brand category and asked to identify those they currently used, the North Shore tribe’s shared brand repertoire [brands that more than two-thirds of the very diverse group members used] was more than twice the size of all the other tribes put together.
This is the engine room of the consumer economy – as a group they have the capacity to affect almost every business supplying products into the New Zealand market. For better or for worse. And now we have evidence they hunt as a pack.”
For me, this has been a compelling piece of work, which I think shows exactly why New Zealand manages to survive its precarious economic position somewhere down the OECD. There’s spirit here. When push comes to shove we don’t muck about. Y
es we moan and whinge, but people have adapted fast – even those who didn’t really have to. It’s as if the herd instinct has kicked in. Conspicuous consumption is now a little odd. Frugality already seems natural.
This may be the end of the golden weather but we have our brolleys up and our gumboots on. Now it's up to the firms that supply our wants and needs to adapt to the time of the hunter, without inadvertently - through actions like lay-offs - making things any worse for us..
Cheers
Jill Caldwell is Director of Windshift Communications Ltd. Click Here to contact Jill directly This is a free monthly newsletter provided to direct subscribers and legitimate Windshift contacts only. No further use is made of subscriber information. [Copyright Windshift Communications Ltd 2006]
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