Pi-Consulting

Tech rules. The average American comes up with more commercially exploitable technological innovations and ideas than people from practically any other country. The Finns, for some reason, seem to be the runners-up. Despite this, the typical American faced with a malfunctioning electronic device, notwithstanding his/her membership of the most technologically advanced society in man’s history, still usually resorts to ‘percussive maintenance’, i.e. thumping the crap out of the thing to try to start it working again. (Sources: World Economic Forum, The Dilbert Zone, Pi)

God gave Adam a luxuriant growth of facial hair, but every morning his sons laboriously scrape it off again. A huge global industry is based on this curious fact.

What do men use to keep themselves clean-shaven? A recent survey in Europe showed that 45% of European males have electric shavers, and that nearly two-thirds of them use some kind of wet-shaving system, whether conventional razors or the disposable kind. All together those who shave seem to represent nearly 90% of adult males. (There is some duplication: a significant number of ‘wet shavers’ apparently keep an electric shaver handy as well). That leaves around 10% of adult males who don’t give any direct evidence that they shave at all.

Logic says that we can assume that those guys all wear beards. In the absence of “Do you have a beard?” as a questionnaire item in most surveys, it’s perhaps as close as we’re likely to get. (But wait. Could these people be regular shavers who happen to use someone else’s razor? Their wives’ or girlfriends’, for instance? Ewwwww!!! If yes, Pi would like to hear from the Wronged Women whose shaving equipment is being borrowed by their Unprincipled Menfolk. In keeping with this website’s fearless editorial policy, We Will Name The Guilty Men).

Interestingly enough, a man’s propensity to wear a beard seems to vary according to a North-South divide, at least in Europe. A higher proportion of British men turned up in the “don’t shave” column than Frenchmen. There are considerably more bearded men in the chilly climes of Germany than in sunny Spain, where the clean-shaven predominate by a higher margin. Pi’s Law of Thermobarbanomics (“more heat, less beards”) could be close to becoming proven scientific fact.

Electric shaver owners tend to be older (peak age is 55+), and predominantly married. They seem to be the buttoned-up sort, who like organized routines, and judge a fellow by the car he drives. Wet shavers cluster in the younger age ranges, and are slightly more likely to be divorced or separated.

How do non-shavers differ from their clean-shaven brethren? For a start, they tend to be either way older or way younger, polarized to the under-20 and over-65 age groups. Many of the younger ones are students, and still single. Temperamentally, they can be casual to the point of untidiness, forthright to the point of rudeness, and they tend to do things impulsively, on the spur of the moment. They don’t really see cars as status symbols, don’t put much effort into appearing attractive to women, and are not particularly happy with their jobs. Barbarians, perhaps… ?

As this site reported on March 17th, “America’s consumer electronics (CE) industry is grappling with stringent new federal and state legislation to ensure that manufacturers ‘take out the garbage’ as they sell-in new gizmos like HDTV. The issue is a serious one, with the impending switch-off of analogue TV services likely to mean huge numbers of old TV sets getting left on the sidewalk”. We spoke too soon. A new CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) study posits an “afterlife” for many superannuated TV sets. “While some have speculated that millions of TVs would enter the waste stream, …results of the (CEA) study …show that households …expect to remove fewer than 15 million televisions from their homes through 2010. Ninety-five percent will be sold, donated or re-cycled”. Nearly half of OTA-only (i.e. traditional “over-the-air”) TV households “expect to buy a digital converter box, …and to continue using the same TV”. When the old set has to go, re-cycling is increasingly the disposal method of choice, with consumers reporting 30% more TV’s recycled in 2007 than two years earlier. Pi salutes this impressively green and responsible consumer trend! Sources: CEA, Pi.

Jet-setters in Europe seem to be giving way to train-setters. Air travel is losing its glamour as crowded airports, flight delays, security lines and baggage snarl-ups take their toll. In Western Europe, an invitation to “come fly with me” is these days just as likely to be met with a dismissive “No thanks, I’ll take the train”. The difference is high-speed rail technology, with new lines already installed across France, Germany and Italy, and now snaking their way through Spain and the UK too. Speeds of up to 200 miles-per-hour mean short, comfortable journeys between over a dozen key European destinations. A new rail link just inaugurated in London and South-East England, joining up with the Channel Tunnel, has brought high-speed travel to the British leg of the Paris-to-London route, with the two city centers now only 140 minutes apart. Could this be the beginning of a “Spring Break Party Train–Gone Wild?” And no faffing around in airports! Jet-setting is, like, so last year. Source, The Economist, Pi.

British author Neil Boorman was worried that branded goods were eating his brain. “I realized I wasn’t buying clothes, gadgets, even food for the functions they performed. I bought them for the way they made me feel”. So he gave up buying anything with a brand-name on it for a year. He found it surprisingly difficult, buying food at weekly produce markets (”You have to plan ahead”), and getting household cleaning products at janitorial supply stores. Technology and entertainment were a problem, since almost nothing came without a brand identity, so he spent a year without TV or DVDs. On the plus-side, he made friends with his local butcher and the fishmonger, whom he now “knows by name”. A surprising by-product of the experience: he lost fifteen pounds in weight, since there were no non-branded equivalents of processed foods and ready-to-eat meals. Source: BBC News, Pi.

Pi Market Research Staff and Pi Consulting wishes every one a Safe and Prosperous New Year!