THE RISE OF THE PROSUMER
Once more the reasons are multiple. Inflation. The diimlty of getting a carpenter or plumher. Shoddy work. Expandedleisure. All these play a part. A more potent reason, however, is what might be called the Law of Relative Inefficiency. This holds that the more we automate the production (if goods and lower their per-unit cost, the more we increase (lie relative cost of handcrafts and nonautomated services. (If a plumber gets $20 for a one-hour house call and $20 will buy one hand calculator, his price, in effect, goes up substan-(i.illy when the same $20 will buy several hand calculators. Relative to the cost of other goods, his price has risen several limes over.)
For such reasons, we must expect the price of many services to continue their skyrocketing climb in the years ahead. And as these prices soar, we can expect people to do more nnd more for themselves. In short, even without inflation, the Law of Relative Inefficiency would make it increasingly “profitable” for people to produce for their own consumption, thus transferring further activity from Sector B to Sector A of the economy, from exchange production to presumption.
OUTSIDERS AND INSIDERS
To glimpse the long-range future of this development, we need to look not only at services, but at goods. And when we do we find that here, too, the consumer is increasingly being drawn into the production process.
Thus eager manufacturers today recruit—even pay—customers to help design products. This is not merely true in industries that sell direct to the public—food, soap, toiletries, et cetera—but even more so in the advanced industries like elec-l ronics where de-massification is most rapid.
“We’ve been most successful when we have worked closely with one or two customers,” says the manager of Texas Instruments’ planning system. “To go off and study an application by ourselves and then try to come up with a standard product in that market has not been successful.”
Indeed, Cyril H. Brown of Analog Devices, Inc. divides all products into two kinds: “inside-out” products and “outside-in” products. The latter are defined not by the manufacturer hut by the potential customer, and these outsider products, uccording to Brown, are ideal. The more we shift toward advanced manufacture, and the more we de-massify and custo-mize production, the stronger the customer’s involvement in the production process must necessarily grow.
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