Are we losing as a consumer?

Short Answer, Yes
Long Answer, well that’s a 5 min read.

Welcome back to this week’s edition of The Tech Bridge.
It must have a shocked you that I answered the question right at the beginning. It’s against the norms of building content, but I didn’t want to practice the very thing I am calling out. Because I’m also a consumer at the end of the day.

Now what do I mean that we are losing as a consumer?
It means that we don’t have the decision power anymore. Crazy right? Let me break it down with something you can relate to and numbers.

Avg attention span of adults in the year 2000 ≈ 12 seconds
Avg attention span of adults in the year 2024 ≈ 8.25 seconds
Avg attention span of goldfish ≈ 9 seconds
On Avg, users will read only 28% of what’s written on a web page.

But why am I showing you attention span numbers? What does it have to do with we losing as a consumer?
Its because, we’re almost driven away today to lose attention. When we lose attention, we spend less time thinking critically. And in response, we lost out on the ability to make clear definitive decisions, which affects our buying.

Ever heard about Impulse Buying?
Its not new. But, it’s crazier now than ever. Let me explain.
In this style of buying, we rarely have a product on our mind beforehand, which means it was neither a necessity nor a want. Even after that, we make a purchase just because of the sheer impact of a campaign on us.

The Soneva Jani, the best Maldives resort

But now you’d say, isn’t it difficult to sell to somebody with lesser Attention span?
It absolutely is. But, we’re not the seller here. We’re the buyer. A few mins back, we didn’t have the urge to buy something, now we are surfing the internet for let’s say, resort in Maldives?
See what I did?

Btw did you know Maldives has banned Israeli tourist in lieu of the current war?
If you reached a search of alternates on Maldives tourism, then that is exactly the point I’m making. If you didn’t reach just now, I’m pretty sure you will in some time, because it’ll pop-up in news or ads sometime just now because you searched Maldives.

This is where we are made a fool of. Don’t think any particular seller is gaining from this. Well some are, but not the ones selling the products but the ones who have created the platforms. But Long story short, our attention is being used to drive the dollars more-so-than-ever.

The bigger problem is we don’t even realise this. We searched it, we clicked on the button, we get excited, we purchase the product and probably we’re happy with it. But do you really think we’d ever be sad of a purchase we’ve made? Like seriously counter our own judgement? I don’t think as humans, that suits us :)

Why am I discussing this today?
Because I’m explaining the topic “Growth” to you. Yes, that growth marketing, growth product, growth hacking department of the company.
”Bollocks! What are you even saying”
I’m telling you the fact, simplified. The play on the attention from a marketing, product and strategy POV is essentially this field. We’ll discuss this in way much detail as we build on, but for now, I’m tryin

So now we have a couple topics covered, AI and Growth. You’d tune in for the next one right? We have 10 lined up, before we start getting into niche and detailed topics.
As usual it’ll be unusual, random and super simple.

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Thank you and take care
MJ.