The Great Recession as an enabler of changing values

Typically recessions are bad news for changes of any type. They tend to induce a degree of paralysis–a hunker down, cut costs, and wait-and-see approach. Anything new and innovative, or viewed as discretion, comes under scrutiny and many do not survive. It’s about going back to what’s familiar. Values change has not typically been exempt. In times of economic duress, the pattern of long-terms values change has slowed and even reversed. It does resume, however, when the recession is over and things go back to “normal.” For instance, there were clear reversals in the values changes after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and after the end of Apartheid South Africa.

The long term values-change pattern covered in ConsumerShift has been over the course of a generation (roughly the last 30 years). It been a long, gradual movement from “older” to “newer” values (i.e., from traditional to modern to postmodern to integral, as will be explained).  Put simply, in times of stress, people tend to avoid change and revert to what’s comfortable. Thus, one would expect that consumers who have been newly embracing postmodern values, for example, would be reverting back to modern values given the Great Recession.

Alas, here is where things get interesting. The arrival of “new values”—described here as postmodern and integral—appears to be bucking the pattern; that is, the Great Recession may be reinforcing the emergence of the new. In a nutshell, these new values suggest a consumer lifestyle that puts less emphasis on economic success and material goods achievement, and more emphasis on quality-of-life concerns. The constraints imposed by the Great Recession actually make it “easier” to put less emphasis on economic matters. For example, let’s say one is forced to take a pay cut. One response might be to take a second job to make up the lost income. A postmodern values family, however, may make that pay cut an opportunity to “downsize” their lifestyle and prepare them for a parent to take another job more in sync with their values—since they can now live at a lower income level. To be clear, this is one example and not meant to suggest that all postmodern values holders will embrace less money. They are looking for ways to sync up their values and lifestyles. Ironically, the Great Recession is more likely to enable rather than inhibit change. Andy Hines