Buying art in TK Maxx

Yesterday in TK Maxx, I watched a lady browsing art. The art, in this case, consisted of a selection of framed prints, limited editions and a number of original canvases. As one expects in TK Maxx, the subject matter, style and quality of art on offer was much more diverse than would be normal in other art shops or departments.

The shopper in question seemed really attracted by a Thomas Kinkade style oil original (unnamed artist) in a realistic landscape tradition. But suddenly she put that down and switched her interest to a signed limited edition print by a known contemporary artist which was semi-abstract and modern in style. As far as I could see, the two pictures had absolutely nothing in common (see above) apart from sharing roughly similar prices (~£25). The shopper happily placed the semi-abstract work in her wire trolley and moved on.

I was left wondering – had she come to TK Maxx to look for art? Did she know the kind of art she liked or was looking for? Did she have both kinds of art in her home already? Was she maybe swung by the fact that she could acquire a signed limited edition for a mere £25? – in terms of the art world, this certainly represents extraordinary value.

The research we have done suggests that consumers typically enter a shop (or website) and rapidly scan the range of products on display in order to locate “the kind of stuff they like” (be that art, furniture or clothes). They then ignore the majority of products on offer and concentrate their attention on that much reduced search space which matches their taste. This obviously minimises the cognitive load of shopping – especially for items which need to appeal to one’s aesthetic taste. But TK Maxx doesn’t enable you to do that. The store provides no grouping of the clothes, home furnishings or art by style, label, fashion or taste – only by functional category and size. Given the diversity of their sources and the rapidity of their turnover, it’s difficult to see how else they could operate.

So, I’m left puzzling over the following questions…

Do TK Maxx’s regular customers have a very different cognitive ‘sorting’ strategy when it comes to shopping for aesthetic items like clothes or art? or

Do they have or a much greater tolerance for large and complex search spaces? or

Do they possess a much more eclectic (or at least less rigid) set of aesthetic tastes? or

Are they more confident (than the rest of the population) in constructing their own unique taste combinations, i.e. their own personal ‘brand’?

I don’t know.

Maybe, it’s simply that TK Maxx actually reflects the essence of retail therapy – i.e. the goal is to browse, find and acquire “a bargain” – the nature of the product itself is not the goal.

I hope there may be a chance to explore this at some point and find out.

Enjoying the moment (or not)

Having endured the Llanelli Scarlets losing 3 rugby matches on the trot in the past few weeks, I’ve been reflecting (as I am forced to do from time to time) why I pay good money to “enjoy” such experiences.

Well firstly, I did enjoy anticipating each of these matches and the bigger the match, the more intense the pleasure of anticipation. So, I certainly got some enjoyment there.

Secondly, I know that IF we had eventually won any of these matches (and that was a real possibility in all 3 cases) then, having gritted my teeth for some lengthy parts of the match, I’d have revelled in the memory of it for some while afterwards (up until our next loss in fact).

So, paradoxically, maybe one’s enjoyment of the actual 80 minutes of the match itself is the wrong bit to focus on!

It turns out there is some truth in this – even for pleasurable experiences. A series of studies back in 1997 showed that people’s expectations of pleasurable experiences (such as holidays or day trips) and their recollections of them afterwards are both more positive than their experience of the events whilst they are actually happening!

And Kahneman, the hedonics specialist, argues that the “psychological present” only lasts somewhere between 0.5 and 3 seconds anyway – so maybe “how it feels at the time” is rarely the point! Most of our experience of life is either in anticipation or recollection – it’s very difficult (and maybe even somewhat disappointing) to live entirely in the present!

Also, according to the empirical evidence gathered by Csikszentmihalyi, the activities which people say they enjoy the most are the ones where they experience ‘flow’, i.e. they are so absorbed in the activity itself that they effectively lose consciousness of that present moment. Presumably, they can only really tell you how good it felt on reflection.

A Morning Dose of Bloglines

One of the (many) enjoyable parts of my working day is the half an hour I spend sipping my morning coffee and browsing my Bloglines. My particular aggregation of RSS feeds includes headlines from the world of contemporary art, psychology, dementia, cultural trends, and technology gadgets. And the best thing about it? – the sheer, uncontrolled ‘mess’ of concepts and ideas with which I’m confronted every day.

One moment I’m reading about complex decisions being better left to unconscious, rather than conscious, deliberation – a study showing that consumers are happier with complex products they’ve purchased when their decisions have been made in the absence of deliberate attention. The next moment I’m reading about a California meat distributor cheerfully buying a Picasso original from Costco for $39,999.99 because (I quote) “they just sell the top quality — whatever you buy at Costco, whether it's a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner. I just thought, if it's a Picasso, you can't go wrong." And then there are the 5 Islamic women in Saudi Arabia who, fed up with the severe male domination in their country, have opted to undergo sex change operations so that they can live (what we would consider) a normal life.

It struck me that I like Bloglines for the same reason that I like and need a messy desk – it’s fundamental to the kind of work I do. As I wrote about some while ago, the (apparent) mess of papers, books and magazines on my office desk and floor are actually a holding pattern of multiple, loosely connected facts and ideas - a material trace, if you will, of my current, constantly changing, model of the world. Even the distance between the piles and their position on the desk (or floor) has a loose semantics associated with it.

And now, every morning, Bloglines delivers a fresh, entirely unconnected ‘mess’ of ideas and observations from across the globe – these new bits of information can’t be filed (“where on earth would you put them?") but they get absorbed into the general mental mix for that day. This might result in new and surprising associations being made or significant new concepts being formed. Or it might not. Whatever, it’s certainly better than caffeine as a way of kicking the brain into gear for the day.