{"id":2392,"date":"2010-11-24T06:26:52","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T13:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonapollovoss.local\/?p=2392"},"modified":"2018-08-17T08:57:33","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T12:57:33","slug":"consumer-habits-have-changed-signed-the-wsj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/11\/24\/consumer-habits-have-changed-signed-the-wsj\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer habits have changed, signed the WSJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent story that has been running for the last two days, entitled, “The Just-in-Time Consumer.\u00a0 It tells a story of a U.S. consumer that has finally gotten more realistic about his or her spending.\u00a0 Specifically the article highlights a number of statistics and anecdotes that tell the story of a shopper that used to stock up on many goods for months, that now purchases things only as needed.\u00a0 Imagine that!<\/span><\/p>\n

Food and toiletries are the major culprits.\u00a0 The story tells the stories of consumers who had many months worth of food in their pantry.\u00a0 One woman had about a year’s supply of makeup, that for the entire “kit” cost upwards of $1,000 (!).\u00a0 And on and on.\u00a0 Unfortunately, most of this wretched excess was financed with debt.\u00a0 In my “Best of the Blog” piece I emphasized that the United States had to wean itself of its spendthrift, debt-using, ways.\u00a0 I have also been saying that this process would be painful, but painfully necessary.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, this change in consumer behavior is believed to be permanent.\u00a0 Consequently, manufacturers and retailers are adjusting the way they produce goods and services in order to accommodate the “just-in-time consumer.”<\/span><\/p>\n

My point in relating the WSJ story is that this is very strong evidence that one of the things I felt was needed in order to right the U.S. economic ship for the near and distant future, was that consumer behavior had to change.\u00a0 It is very likely a new and strange world out there, for consumers and those that supply them.\u00a0 For over 20 years the U.S. has shifted from a net-saving nation to a net-debtor nation.\u00a0 The savings rate was negative for over a decade.\u00a0 Thankfully the recession was severe enough to have a silver-lining: consumers are buying more of what they need, and less of what they don’t.\u00a0 Now the rest of the world needs to adjust, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent story that has been running for the last two days, entitled, “The Just-in-Time Consumer.\u00a0 It tells a story of a U.S. consumer that has finally gotten more realistic about his or her spending.\u00a0 Specifically the article highlights a number of statistics and anecdotes that tell the story of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}