Sublime

Rather than setting their sights on the traditional, broad segments, smart brands will target narrower demographic tribes of shared taste, interest, and sensibility. Psychographics—close study of customer lifestyles, interests, attitudes, and more—is nothing new. And of course, it's received wisdom now that the Internet has made it possible to iden

We no longer see things as culture dictates we should. We are now getting closer to see the thing itself. Culture is breaking as we attempt to use it. In these few instances, it is slipping away before our very eyes.

Indeed, if one imagines these two threads in capitalist culture—instrumental/rational and expressive/affective—as the strands in a rope twisted tighter and tighter, then the rope began to double up and curl back onto itself as rational calculations were proposed for the intimate sphere and, as I will show, expressive and affective approaches were p

The “Veblen effect” was coined in 1950 by economist Harvey Leibenstein, who pointed out that consumer demand depended not only on the functional utility of goods but also on certain social factors: a desire to be “in style” (the “bandwagon effect”); a desire to stand out from the herd (the “snob effect”); and a desire for “conspicuous consumption,”