Everyday life to the average individual is characterised by a routine. This generates boredom, so in an attempt to escape from this, consumers enjoy the pleasures of day-dreaming and longing for something different to fuel excitement. Have you ever gazed into a shop window? Flicked through magazine advertisements for your favourite product, or even found something that you were looking for in a free catalogue? This is the consumer desire process and it has become a social norm in today’s world. It is described as the needs and wants of the consumer. Campbell (1987) describes the process as a “powerful cyclic emotion which delivers longing, pleasure, discomfort and disappointment”. This suggests that it is a cycle in which the consumer firstly wants an object, obtains the object, then starts to feel disappointed with the object / gets bored finally putting the object into the ‘displacement’ stage which later forgotten about. According to Belk et al (2003) the desire cycle can be accelerated by the “desire to desire, the hope for hope and the fear of being without desire and is further animated by the tension between morality and seduction”.
An example of how consumer desire has been accelerated is by looking at the online world. This is where you can find yourself looking for just about anything and being able to purchase it at great ease. This has been labelled ‘Digital virtual consumption’. One of the most significant sources for this particular activity is the online auction website, EBay.
Knott D (2010) claims that desire is accelerated through 3 practices:
- Quick achievement of receiving the desired item
- Removal of moral consequences to purchases
- Temporary ownership of digital virtual representations of desired goods
This suggests that an object that possibly could have been too expensive for the consumer in the past or maybe extremely rare to find in a regular shopping centre can now quickly and easily be purchased by the consumer. This leaves them ease of purchase for just about anything which inevitably leaves the consumer wanting more in order to keep their desire fuelled.
This website does a lot more than just fuel desire; Knott D (2010) describes the site as a “composite of consumer practices, including browsing, monitoring, temporary ownership of goods, actual material ownership through purchases”. I have an EBay account and through my experience I have been drawn in to certain purchases which have been monitored for days on end, only increasing my desire for the certain object only to realise a few weeks later that I have become used to it and it no longer excites me, and consecutively beginning the cycle again. EBay effectively does this by “shortening the distance between desire and actualisation through digital virtual and material consumption” Knott D (2010). This suggests that daydreaming/desire of having a product to the actualisation of having it can present problems for advertisers. Because of the speed of the cycle Campbell (1987) argues that EBay is “robbing consumers of the pleasures associated with wanting”. Consumers can no longer relate to a product that is truly special to them due to the ease of receiving it through the online world. Desire is now minimised with the consumer constantly thinking about the next object that they desire without consideration due to the disappointment after them receiving it once their desire if fulfilled. Advertisers now have to be quicker with their messages in order to grab their attention before they simply move on.
However as an advertiser I feel that this can be a process that can be exploited. Because desire is now accelerated by the online world, advertisers can now use their messages to further fuel their desire informing and guiding them towards purchases which aim to utilise the cycle of desire.
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