Beyond luxury: The new rules of indulgence for leaders
Download the full What The Future: Indulgence issueImagine it’s 2052.
What do you do when your luxury brand isn’t an indulgence? Or your indulgent product becomes a vice? Or a new market opens up because what once was a vice is now just … a thing people do.
Luxury is shifting. Bottle service at the club with a super high-end whiskey or vodka was one definition of luxury. As our need to indulge has collided with our growing sense of wellness as a need (and sometimes a luxury in itself) that bottle might now be nonalcoholic, but just as expensive.
Meanwhile, conspicuous consumption ran into quiet luxury ran into virtue signaling ran into social media. Most global citizens now say they want to buy brands that align with their values, one of the largest shifts in the last decade of Ipsos Global Trends.
Sure, but how can brands align with anyone’s values without alienating the other side? All these topics are now political.
Let’s talk about sex (and babies)
For instance, sex can be used to make babies. Many say we need more of those and need to juice the birth rate, which has fallen for decades. But sex can also happen for other reasons. Are those non-procreation reasons more like indulgences then? We talk to journalist and author Carter Sherman about this later in the issue.
We also asked an AI chatbot that mimics historical figures to answer that question as Anthony Comstock, the late 1800s morality crusader whose eponymous legislation is back in the news. AI-Comstock says, “I believe that sex should only be for procreation within marriage. I see anything else as a danger to morals and society. The danger is that if people ignore moral rules about sex, society will become chaotic. I fear it will harm families, encourage crime and weaken people’s character.”
AI-Comstock says he couldn’t imagine in his day something like having sex with an AI — something that would mean one could, um, self-indulge without corrupting the morals of others. What if you could substitute the more vice-y part of an activity for something that removes the vice?
Take high-end nonalcoholic beverages, which we discuss later in the issue. They are another case where the vice part (the booze) is removed, but the indulgent experiences and feelings remain. We asked AI-Frances Willard, a 19th-century contemporary of Comstock, who led the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, about that. Her response is quite reasonable: The substitution reduces the chance for harm and therefore seems aboveboard. She does, however, frown on the idea that a group of college students living in her namesake dorm would brew a beer in her honor and put her face on the labels. (Oops, my bad.)
My point is that these topics have always, to some degree, been political. There have always been tensions rooted in values. Those values can shift, however. And the degree to which they are political can be ratcheted up and down. At the moment, they are arguably at an all-time high of polarization.
Is our morality becoming more puritanical?
It’s possible that regulation got ahead of public opinion. It’s also possible that permissive regulation gave people what they wanted and now they’re not so sure, and the pendulum is swinging back.
One of the most startling findings in our data (but which we’ve now seen show up in other sources, too) is the decrease in people who think many activities are morally acceptable.
In 2018 for the Vice issue of What the Future, we fielded a study about “consuming, watching or doing” a variety of things “in moderation.” We asked again about each of the items in August of this year. Each option saw a sizeable decrease in people saying it was morally acceptable.
That was true for beverages like wine (down 8 percentage points), beer (down 9 points), liquor (down 16 points) and sugary soft drinks (down 17 points). It was true for casino gambling, down 16 points to 38% and online gambling, also down 16 points. It was true for cannabis, down 9 points. The drinking categories were all still considered moral by most Americans. The rest all slipped below 50%.
Privacy and freedom
At the heart of the issues of indulgence and luxury are often topics we talked about in the American Dream issue: freedom, a bedrock American value, and its cousin privacy.
Freedom is often tied to policy, or lack thereof. It can be based on shifting morality. If gambling is seen as more acceptable, policy can follow, and people will have more freedom to gamble. Policy can also be used as a barrier to moral shifts.
Access to porn is having a regulatory moment these days as age verification laws pop up around the U.S. and in other nations. Unsurprisingly, that restriction is reducing traffic to sites that play by the rules (and driving it to those sites that don’t). Who wants to upload a government ID to each or any porn site they visit when there are so many options that don’t require it? If these morals and morality shift, that’s a pretty straight line to sex in media and then sex in marketing.
Americans prize their privacy, but that, too, has shifted.
Most people are willing to trade some privacy for more personalized advertising, for instance. And people recognize that privacy is harder to protect online. But we still want the freedom to indulge in our vices and not have that privacy violated or impinged on.
This is not an easy landscape for people or leaders to navigate.
Is indulgence a luxury?
Having the freedom to indulge can be a luxury in itself. Having the freedom to make choices about what to indulge in or not can be, too. Part of that choice is economic. There’s some tension around whether people think luxury should be accessible for all (65%) or not (35%).
The Ipsos online communities were asked about luxury and what it means to them. One recurring sentiment is summed up by a participant thusly, “It offers a deep sense of satisfaction.” That seemed true both for the people who indulged in luxury and those who clearly longed to but couldn’t. Some, however, say they prefer to focus on other things and aren’t out to impress people.
The big word in the cloud, “expensive,” cuts two ways.
“Expensive” can be an indicator of luxury or a barrier to an indulgence. In 2022, most Americans, 58%, say they planned for large purchases. Now, that’s up to three in four (76%), as an increasing number say that the overall economy today, as well as where the economy is headed, impacts their purchases.
Millennials are more likely to fund their splurges with debt from credit cards to buy now, pay later plans. They’re also the generation most likely to use savings. Millennials and Gen Z are both also likely to substitute goods, with about one in three saying when they’re looking to splurge, they buy used or downgrade to an off-brand version of a product.
People can now downgrade from real to fake for cost reasons and not necessarily sacrifice the image-making benefits of having the item in the first place. Wirkin bag, anyone?
Tech is an enabler of dupe culture and a category that is benefiting from its own status as a luxury item, one of the categories we most splurge on, according to the Ipsos Consumer Tracker.
Tech can also be a disrupter of dupe culture as AI is increasingly being used to help spot fakes in the marketplace.
What even is a vice these days?
Tech is also an enabler that is driving a rise in accessibility and, therefore, perhaps driving an accelerated change in morality.
It’s easy to see a virtuous cycle of increasing accessibility and decreasing scorn/shame.
When asked about vice, the Ipsos online community members had a wide range of ideas. Those who associate vice with “Miami” were clearly my people. (For those too young to remember, “Miami Vice” was a hit TV show in the ’80s.)
Many saw vices as harmless or at least “something everyone has.” There were feelings of guilt in the responses, too, as well as stronger sentiments like “My vices have a grip on me.”
There were many negative emotions about vices as bad habits. That was true in both the adult and the teen communities. Again, however, there are shifts.
If you want to bet now, you don’t have to find a shady bookie, who in movies always had kneecap-busting friends close at hand. Now, you can download a betting app on a phone, a device seen generally as morally acceptable (though social media popped in our research as a top vice!), or you can cut out the bookie entirely.
Online prediction markets let people swap risk amongst themselves, essentially wagering on everything from who will be the next GOP nominee (Vice President JD Vance is currently favored) to how many streams Mr. Beast will get on his videos next month.
Not that the downsides of indulging go away. Richard Reeves, whom we interviewed in the American Dream issue, sees many of these indulgences as a serious problem for a generation of young men prone to shortcuts and get-rich-quick schemes. (See also: cryptocurrency.)
States where sports betting has been legalized have seen resident credit scores decrease and bankruptcies increase.
Which brings us back to this core question: At what point is an indulgence a luxury and at what point does it become a vice? I mean, you can buy weed in designer dispensaries next to the local Chipotle and downstairs from your gym.
As the lines between indulgence, luxury and vice shift, markets are made and markets fade. Again, that comes down to values and mores, but also to the economy shaping them, as one in four people say that even when money is tight, they still treat themselves to small luxury purchases.
The luxury of real and human
Today, we have a world where dupes are prevalent; where apps can lead you to all sorts of indulgences and remove a lot of the “shame” of taking part in them. We have a world where our morals are shifting in real-time. We have a world where we can do more indulgent things with technology. We have a world that is increasingly automated, and items and products that used to be considered a luxury due to the craftsmanship required to make them can now be mass-produced.
In this world, rapid change in values leads to dangerous times for brands eager to align with said values.
But also in this world, the human touch itself becomes a luxury. Handmade: premium. Human white-glove customer service: premium. A place to connect with humans and share a (boozy or not) beverage in person: premium. An experience that happens in reality, not mediated by a screen: premium.
This much is true: People will continue to indulge. How extravagant those indulgences are, and whether they’re viewed more as luxuries or vices will ebb and flow with the economy and with changes in technology. Several questions will require further discussion and ongoing research:
- What role will AI play in the balance between dupe culture, infinite customization and the further premiumization of the human touch?
- How will the norms, values and regulations change around what is an indulgence, what is a vice and what is just a thing we do now?
- As standards of living increase, will personalization and luxury become ever more over the top?
- Where do wellness and indulgence intersect? Where do they diverge?
- If sex is more polarizing than ever, will it still work in marketing and media? Or will it not be worth the risk?
I appreciate you indulging What the Future with the biggest luxury of all: your time and attention.
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