LEARNING CONSUMER
Today’s trend in the world of
consumerism is revealed by the coming of new society: learning consumer. They
are young people who are always conditioned to learn and consume. New product
with the latest version always attract and invite new consumer as it offers convenience,
pleasure, and entertainment. It has become reality that young people have high
expectation of living in the electronic life of automatization – less physical
mobilization, more need on practicality and time efficiency. There is typical character
to deserve easy access for information in order to be more knowledgable. This
fact follows creation of new needs – being highly informed. Consequently, this
creation of new needs and consumers (by market mechanism) has brought into
another reality – a learning consumer.
As capitalism and capitalist
culture are still very dominant, they successfully sell the idea of consumption
as an effective tool to consume more. Consumption culture which has been
created by capitalism values to more convenience to consume. Market mechanism
in capitalist culture is more on developing effective tools for consumption.
See what happen in the market now is the culture of easiness – easy life for
the sake of time. There has been trend of competitive market which only sells
newness – new version of gadget. Instead of being creative to return the
humanity side of consumer – consumer as a subject, creativity in the
competitive market promotes values of being smart and intelligent object. In
addition, failure of capitalism is that it always avoids dichotomy material and
immaterial. Therefore, material is the end while immaterial is (perhaps) relying
on religion. Immaterial world is too abstract for capitalism.
Learning consumer in those
perspective is craving to find and learn
new things without being able to critisize or to position himself as the one
who should take control. It is blinded by unstoppable desire (to consume) that
consumer has ambition to explore new needs and, at the same time, finding the
most effective way to satisfy. As usual, young people become the easy target.
Now, they know well how to select – best selection but out of critisizing
themselves to control desire and needs. Through revolutionary market creativity
they profoundly achieve skills to find the best product. It seems to be unfair
to see the reality of dominant market but it is really needed and widely
accepted./@3_2012
