The Business of Aspiration: How Social, Cultural, and Environmental Capital Changes Brands

Many might think of exclusivity as the main product here, but the true product is the people. As a feature, exclusivity ensures a certain shared value system, attractiveness level, and often homogeneity of those people, and that’s what consumers are willing to pay for.

Membership is also a vehicle of the modern aspiration economy. It represents a shift from doing things for the benefit of others (conspicuous consumption) to a value model where we invest in things that benefit ourselves: access, knowledge, information, experience, privacy, belonging, self-actualization. In the modern aspiration economy, consumers ... See more

The next wave of big consumer companies will be community-based products: - Niche, not everything to everyone - Unique aesthetic - Built-in community - More memorable than big platforms - Rewarding loyalty - Unbundling large platforms - An experience not a transaction - Fun

All in all, real positional scarcity businesses take time to develop, especially loyalty businesses that are difficult to get off the ground before a retail or consumption environment is fully understood. But I’ll leave with this thought: as the mobile internet, e-commerce, and the transformation of retail continues onward, I think there’s an incre... See more