Consumer Choice: Who's Really Choosing?

 

Meaning Matters

Consumer Choice: When Demand Becomes Whatever Is Available

Consumer choice. Consumer demand.

Two familiar terms that seem straightforward enough.

Consumer choice refers to the ability of buyers to select among products and services according to their needs and preferences. Consumer demand describes what buyers are willing and able to purchase at a given price.

But somewhere along the way, we've begun treating what consumers purchase as though it necessarily represents what they prefer.

Those aren't always the same thing.

And sometimes, something as ordinary as a pickup truck makes that distinction painfully obvious.

I miss old-fashioned pickup trucks.

Not because I oppose modern conveniences. I appreciate comfortable seats, good air conditioning, and the technology that makes driving easier. But I miss the days when a pickup truck was designed primarily to be a pickup truck.

A regular cab. A full-length bed. Maybe a little space behind the seats for groceries or things you didn't want getting wet. You could even get a bench seat, although I freely admit those weren't always the most comfortable.

Today, dealership lots are filled with crew cabs, oversized passenger compartments, and truck beds that seem to get shorter with every redesign.

I'm told that's what consumers want.

But is it?

Manufacturers point to sales figures as evidence of consumer demand. Crew cabs sell in greater numbers, so manufacturers produce more crew cabs. Regular cabs become harder to find, particularly if you want anything beyond a basic work-truck package.

Eventually, the argument becomes circular. Manufacturers offer fewer alternatives, consumers purchase what's available, and those purchases become proof that consumers didn't want the alternatives.

Sales figures tell us what people bought. They don't necessarily tell us what people wanted.

And that brings us back to consumer choice and consumer demand.

Consumer choice suggests that buyers have meaningful alternatives. Consumer demand is often invoked as evidence that the marketplace is responding to what buyers want.

But what happens when manufacturers increasingly determine the alternatives before consumers ever get a chance to choose?

Certainly, businesses have legitimate reasons to limit their product lines. Manufacturing costs, regulations, efficiency, and profitability all influence what companies can reasonably offer. And many people genuinely prefer crew-cab pickups.

That's not the issue.

The issue arises when the choices manufacturers make are presented as though they were choices consumers made.

If I walk onto a dealership lot looking for a comfortable regular-cab pickup with a long bed, but nearly everything available is a crew cab, I may eventually purchase a crew cab. Perhaps I need a truck now. Perhaps ordering something different isn't practical. Perhaps the configuration I want isn't offered with the features I need.

My purchase will be recorded as another crew-cab sale.

But it won't tell anyone that I wanted a regular cab.

And next year's production decisions may rely, in part, on that very sales figure.

We haven't necessarily changed the dictionary definitions of choice or demand. We've changed the assumptions attached to them.

We've begun treating what consumers accept as though it necessarily represents what consumers prefer.

The appearance of choice can exist, even when meaningful choice has been diminished.

This extends well beyond pickup trucks. It happens whenever companies narrow their offerings and then use purchasing behavior to justify the narrowing.

A consumer may select the best available option without believing it's the best possible option.

That distinction matters.

Because when we confuse acceptance with preference, we give manufacturers credit for listening to consumers when they may simply have become very good at directing them.

I don't expect every manufacturer to produce every configuration for every customer. That's neither practical nor economically realistic.

But I do expect us to be careful about the language we use.

Consumer demand should not automatically mean whatever sold.

Consumer choice should not automatically mean whatever happened to be available.

And when a manufacturer tells us that customers have spoken, perhaps we should ask one more question:

Were customers genuinely given a choice, or did they simply buy what was available?