Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Consumer

We all know that middle-class consumers are the latest luxury shoppers. This doesn’t mean, though, that they’re not interested in a good bargain. In this lively new book, Michael Silverstein, coauthor of Trading Up, and his colleague John Butman take a look at the growing appetite of middle-class consumers for cut- price goods in cut-price surroundings. The consumer market, according to Silverstein, is “bifurcating,” and firms positioned in the middle of the market—including even companies like Wal-Mart—are vulnerable to new entrants from both the luxury end and the discount end. Of course, the idea that it’s dangerous to be caught in the middle is hardly new. But Treasure Hunt offers something more, a notion that emerges through the descriptions of individual consumers that form the book’s backbone, and which provide the real reason to read it. Many large companies, Silverstein points out, assume that customers’ demographics are good indicators of their consumption behavior. Purchasing decisions, though, are driven by hopes, loves, experiences, and fears—factors that can never be captured through surveys. Silverstein’s sketches reveal these emotions very skillfully, and the reader is brought squarely into the lives of the people he describes—such as Peter Kim, an artist-waiter worried that his friends are leaving him behind, or 30-something Lauren James, attractive, educated, and terrified of being alone.