There’s a things in marketing called paying for painful consumption experiences. I heard about this for the first time a few days ago and it refers to things like boxing, triathlons or climbing. They’re not always pleasant and we potentially suffer pain when we complete them. From a marketing perspective it would be why people are willing to pay for these things and how to make them do it. How can you convince someone to not only participate in something that will leave them in pain but actively give you money to inflict it upon them.
When we think of it that way human behaviour can be bizarre. What it does suggest is that our everyday existences lack something so basic and necessary that we will go to extreme lengths to achieve it. It isn’t that we need to experience the sensation of pain, it is the affect upon the human body that experiencing this sensation has. Can we really compare sitting in an office all day or working in retail or whatever average job we may have, to being out hunting an animal for food to survive. Can we even compare it to working in a factory during the industrial revolution. The point is that after thousands of years of feeling the intensity and adrenaline of daily survival we’re now living such safe lives that we actively go out in search of this feeling our bodies have ordinarily been experiencing all these years prior. We need it. But why?
Anyone who has done something extreme like a boxing match, skydiving or climbing a rockface will tell you it makes them feel real. It makes life feel real. They know they’re alive because they feel true existence in that moment. Partly they’re finally there in the present moment. Your head cannot be in the clouds dreaming about the future, the past or dinner when you have to be fully focused on simply getting through that moment. No wonder people hunt out that feeling. You don’t get that punching numbers behind an office screen all day, and I don’t say that critically of punching numbers it is simply an example. The truth is not everybody wants a painful consumption experience. That is also fine.
But why pay for it. Surely we could just go out and swim across the nearest lake or create our own version of these extreme survival things in the nearest woods. That involves effort to set up so it is probably a bad example but there are plenty of extreme things we can do without feeling the need to pay for them or be manipulated by marketing. We put a certain type of value on things when we pay for them. In a way that is how we can create value. If it isn’t handmade or has some emotional importance the likelihood is the other determining factor is a financial one. This is society and this is how we have become programmed to get things. If we want it we pay for it. If we want adrenaline, we’re likely going to find something we can spend money on that will give us that feeling. The marketers understand. They understand us better than we do.
Observations and Misunderstandings 