Cost of Living / Ehud Peleg
To Refuse to Buy – The Consumer’s True Power
Many within the business world, and perhaps some outside it as well, would prefer to see the influence of last summer’s protests dissipate. This is perhaps the best proof of their success and vitality. It offers a lesson to all those who have ignored consumers, belittled them and doubted their power, that without buyers there can be no sellers, and without consumers there can be no producers.
This, in brief, is the secret of the consumer’s power.
This is valid on the level of the individual, and it is even more valid on the level of the public as a whole.
This summer, the consumer community showed that it had the power to change the government’s agenda, and cause a drop in the sales figures of the major food companies. Those who try to play down the effects of the protests invite a future consumer reaction. Because, apart from the direct influences that these protests had, and perhaps more importantly, there has been a fundamental change in the way consumers perceive their own power. Consumers have come to realize the need, in the words of the Consumer Council’s publicity campaign, to begin to “read the bill.”
The monetary value of this change may come to many billions of shekels – in effect, a fine payable to consumers for the unfair practices and overcharging carried out by businesses.
The media is currently considering an interesting question: has the protest movement died? Could it be revived, if the Trajtenberg Committee’s recommendations are whittled away, and if the problems of the cost of living are not dealt with?
The answer to this question, at least when it comes to consumer products, depends on each and every one of us: public protest has to be expressed, first and foremost, through individual protest, at every encounter between the consumer and a product or service. There is a mutual dependence relationship between businesses and consumers: consumers need the products and services, but at the same time businesses need the consumers. Products that are left on the shelves, not only don’t put money in the businesses’s bank accounts ; but also impose significant costs on those businesses. If consumers are prepared to pay the price for delayed gratification, and avoid purchasing high-priced products for a certain amount of time – long enough to impact businesses’ revenues – they will be able to force manufacturers and sellers to drop prices.
This private protest is, simply speaking, intelligent consumer behavior, the kind of behavior that ought to be the norm when dealing with the business sector, independent of any public context. It demonstrates a position of strength against businesses, it protects us from excessive expenditures, and sometimes allows us to influence prices through individual bargaining.
We already know that some business behaviors that hurt consumers rely, to a large extent, on the apathy or passivity of the consumers themselves.
Thus, for example, when businesses overcharge by adding on hidden “extras,” they assume that the consumer is unlikely to check or to question such charges; without such “cooperation” on our part, this approach has little chance of success.
By our being willing to purchase at any price, we become “buying automatons,” who instinctively pull our wallets from our pockets or pocketbooks as soon as we see something we like, and thus play into the hands of businesses.
The ultimate weapon in the hands of the consumer – to refuse to buy – is the true power behind the consumer protests. Last summer we saw just how powerful this weapon was when wielded by hundreds of thousands of consumers. But this power begins with you and me.
We hope that the government will not back off from carrying out the necessary steps to deal with high prices. In particular, there needs to be a focus on promoting competition – either by removing obstacles to competition or by imposing controls on market sectors in which there is no competition.
Till then – let us make use of the one element in the war against the high cost of living that depends on us. It’s time for us to adopt one simple rule: if it’s expensive, don’t buy it.
