Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Reenchanting consumption

Thanks to The Consumerist for linking to University of Chicago grad Jesse Friedman’s term paper on how the Southern California-based specialty grocery store chain Trader Joe’s has succeeded (wildly) by offering something other than speed and convenience. It starts like this:

The success of McDonald’s and other large chains characteristic of modern consumer society follows, according to George Ritzer, from an extremely successful business model of rationalization offering enormous benefits to both company and customer. One consequence of such convenience and efficiency, however, is a sense of disenchantment: a lack of human interest or excitement in the consumption process. Some firms in recent years seem, and often purport, to directly counteract the downsides of hyperrationality through reenchanting the consumption process, while still applying modern operational procedures to ensure profitability. Trader Joe’s, a grocery store specializing in high-quality foods at surprising prices, provides one such intriguing, and very successful, reaction to this so-called McDonaldization. This study draws on visits to two locations, the company’s literature, and observations of customers, and uses Ritzer’s work on the disenchantment of rationalization, as well as Daniel Miller’s understanding of thrift within the framework of shopping as love and Colin Campbell’s discussion of the Romantic background of modern hedonistic consumption, as theoretical frameworks. It seeks to show how Trader Joe’s reenchants the consumption process by trusting its demographic base — which has sophisticated tastes yet appreciates value — to be more than mere lemmings.