At the core of extreme luxury is the notion of scarcity. Now there’s a funny old thing!
As we move through this century, the world will increasingly face scarcity, which will in turn make many of the basic resources that we have taken for granted up to now – luxuries!
Imagine oil at $150 a barrel, water at the same price and electricity charged at a premium over a certain low usage amount. In such a scenario, the ability to produce one’s own resources, water, energy and even clean air would become the ultimate luxuries.
The flip side of this would be that products that use resources much more frugally would become the most desired version, because of their much lower running costs!
Well that scenario is then and this is now! Today, efficiency and the ability to produce clean water or generate your own energy, don’t seem to hold much value to anyone at all as these are basic commodities, at a really affordable price to the general public. Will we ever get from today’s scenario to the above one?
The ultimate sustainability metric is the number of people who have become resource, energy and biosphere positive! Meaning rather than using up natural resources, they actually produce more natural resources than they use. In other words they change the nature of their consumption from, well, consumption to production! And production, in general, makes you richer! Herein lies the trigger to changing consumption habits. When people understand that they need to pay more for a version of a product that produces rather than consumes, we will have set the world on a new course towards a more positive future
It seems to me that in order to encourage this sort of behavior it is going to need to be a position to aspire to. One that has a certain status attached to it that makes it aspirational for the general public.
In this regard the Toyota Prius is quite remarkable. In a market where there was NO alternative to the internal combustion engine greenhouse gas producer, the first halfway decent offer, just took off like a rocket and has grown in sales probably well past Toyota’s expectations. I wonder how much the notion of scarcity has played into this success. By driving one, you are in fact making a statement about your beliefs. Certainly this is the reason that you buy one, because it does not cost less than the combustion engine equivalent over its useful life.
I can’t help thinking there is a fantastic business opportunity for a company to simply base its value proposition on the fact that it’s products are energy/carbon/biologically neutral. There is a strongly growing segment of the population who are ready and willing to buy. If only the offers existed in many more categories.
Are you treating sustainability as a defensive strategy, or as the ultimate value proposition?
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