something between values and price

Gilbert's comment

The trend towards values influencing purchase decisions can be seen as a part of a wider trend that is a direct consequence of modernisation in the Western world In pre-modern societies, place tends to determine values. People don't see themselves as individuals as much as they see themselves as members of communities. In modern societies (and even more so in hypermodern societies if you buy into this concept), values become personalised (Bruce, Sociology: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford 1999).

In modern societies, each individual interacts with a range of worth spheres (a term from Weber, often translated as value spheres), within which they have differing horizons. Strong personal identities arise from the need to communicate where we are in relation to these worth spheres (family, work, practice, interest, age cultures etc). So, as people come under pressure to express their identity, particularly through their personal values, this will influence some purchase decisions.

However, values only partially express an individual's preferences and what they find worthwhile. Value subsume values, and this relating one form of cost (price) to one form of benefit (match to personal values) narrows the range of costs and benefits that combine into decisions about worth.

The naming, articulation, choice and expression of values is a specific form of social performance that is increasingly expected and demanded in modern societies. But as with all that is said, what is done is a better indic ation of what people really want/need/aspire to/dream of. Although Sartre held that by choosing our actions we choose our values, this may not result in them being articulated as such.

In summary, values and price do get us into the cost-benefit analyses that define worth, but I would argue against this as a general framework.

One way to try and simplify this debate is to polarise the discussion into one simply between (human) values and (monetary) price. This has the effect of making a workshop like ours seem almost pointless - ‘values‘ clearly do not have a place in discussions about monetary price and vice versa.Such polarisation is misguided for a number of reasons

  1. people’s purchasing decisions are being influenced more and more by their values. These are most noticeably related to environmental values and decisions about air travel, car ownership or GM foods (for example). But one hears also about parents only wanting one television in the home, or one computer, becuase social interactions are valued above human-computer interactions.
  2. there are important behavioural effects between a purchase decision and my moral values. There are products that people would like, but which they feel do not offer enough value to justify the cost. This is the space where price and value are mismatched, independently of any issues of human values.

Thus - and this is especially true for technology products - people make decisions about owning a product and buying a product independently of decisions about how much they might spend and which brand or model to buy.How do we come to better understand “the products people want to own and buy, but don’t” as well as those “they don’t want to own or buy, but do”?

David Gilmore

Sep 10, 2007 10:20 AM

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