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Taste Got Cheap, Insight Didn't

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Spending Cognitive Bias Status Signalling
Neo W.
Author
Neo W.
Writing about things that intrigue me.
Table of Contents

Taste Got Cheap, Insight Didn’t
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We’ve shifted from buying what we need to buying what says something about us. Two things made that possible, and neither was a change in people — supply chains got cheap, and the internet started delivering taste to you whether you looked for it or not.

How it happened
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Global trade platforms made decent goods affordable, so quality stopped being a rich person’s problem. Then Instagram, TikTok and YouTube began handing you things you’d never have gone looking for. Between them, caring about materials and aesthetics became both easy and cheap.

The comparison that lands: everything used to taste like plain bread. Now there’s Doritos-grade flavour engineering in every category. Once that’s the baseline, ordinary starts to feel like life with the volume turned down.

What changed about buyers
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People now shop by ingredient, material and process rather than by brand or price. They know polyester from a natural fibre. They read the back of a skincare bottle and have opinions about what’s in it.

That knowledge came free, from experts who were willing to explain things at scale. The underlying behaviour hasn’t changed at all — people have always searched for the best one and the ones to avoid. It just happens on TikTok now as much as on Google.

Three things that work as a result
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  • Own one superlative. Build the whole story around being the best at a single quality. “Softest hoodie” is a real example that found a real market. The category doesn’t have to be obvious — it has to be something people want once they hear it named.
  • Lead with what’s actually in it. Educated buyers want the specific active compound, not the product category. Niacinamide 6% and zinc 1%, not “a toner.” Transparency converts the curiosity the free education created.
  • Promise a change, not a purchase. When everything looks good, what separates things is a believable claim about a different life afterwards. People educated into enthusiasm want to take part in something, not just own it.

Four kinds of buyer
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  • The cultural omnivore. Educated by actually living — as comfortable with good caviar as with a taco truck. Won’t touch entry-level luxury, spends properly when the quality is genuinely there. The best customer you can have if your product is real.
  • The petite bourgeoisie. Wants to be the omnivore, follows recommendations, spends above their means to signal having arrived. This is who entry-level luxury is for. Bad personal finance, excellent market.
  • The true elite. Wealthy enough that luxury is just normal spending. Unreachable through Instagram because they don’t follow brands. Requires long storytelling and being present in rooms they’re already in.
  • The aspiring buyer. New money, not yet educated, drawn to logos. Sell too hard here and you dissolve the luxury you were selling; ignore them entirely and you lose people who’d have grown into better customers.

The part worth keeping
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Marketing used to be a brand account, some ads, a few influencers. Now it’s brand-made content plus hundreds of creators making things for free, with paid media amplifying whatever happens to work, and experiences built to be shared rather than merely attended.

But the interesting claim is the last one. All the operational work — landing pages, media buying, testing — is becoming a commodity. The one input that stays scarce is the insight: correctly reading what people actually feel, as opposed to what they say they feel.

People misreport their own motives constantly, and not dishonestly. Whoever can tell the difference, and then commit to that read, is the one who wins. That’s harder to buy than any of the rest of it.

A few small things to try
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  • When you next want something, ask whether you want the object or what owning it says
  • Notice which of the four buyers you’ve been this year
  • If you sell anything, name the one superlative you could plausibly own
  • Watch the gap between what people tell you they want and what they actually pick

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