(From cover story in this week's Time Magazine "How to Survive the Slump") There may be another explanation for this year's slump in retailing: consumer fatigue. The big guessing game this fall was about what this holiday season's gotta-have item would be. The answer: there wasn't one. It wasn't that inventors and manufacturers and marketers and retailers didn't give it their best shot. It's just that in the end, most Americans felt they could live without the latest personal data assistant or robotic dog. The fact is, the New Economy has done a brilliant job over the past decade of putting high-tech gewgaws on the market and into our homes. But maybe it's been a little too brilliant. What's left to buy when you already have your SUV, your DVD and your MP3? The tech industry is learning that one of its biggest challenges is building in enough obsolescence. A key reason for the current slump in computer sales is that box makers haven't convinced consumers that the new models do much that their current PCs can't. And as Microsoft labors on its new operating system, Whistler, it's struggling to build in enough must-have features to make people feel they need to ditch Windows. Karl Marx theorized that capitalism was condemned to repeated depressions because of "cycles of overproduction." Marx may have got some of the details wrong: he thought the workers would be unable to buy goods because their wages would be continually pushed toward subsistence levels. Now it's more likely that consumers are using their well-above-subsistence wages to pay for noncommodities instead, such as travel, restaurant meals and personal trainers. But if Marx had hit the shopping malls last week and seen the heavy discounting--or looked on the Internet and seen the emergence of cut-rate sites like Amazon.com's new outlet store--he would no doubt have felt vindicated. Full article at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,93322-1,00.html _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
