What do You Find at the Centre of the Universe?

The classes I’ve been attending recently made me reflect a lot…

Compared to the conventional market research methods, the emergence of Web 2.0 enables marketers to better track consumer’s lifestyle and behavior. They then crack their brains for innovative ways to penetrate these communities to influence purchase decisions – all these with dramatically improved precision and huge cost savings.

The technicians furiously write softwares as a platform for communities of different passions to grow. The marketers relentlessly think of opportunities to push content to consumers – in their 3G mobile phones, websites they visit, banners that accompany their travel journeys, behind toilet cubicle doors, the list is endless.

This also means that the world we live in is encouraging ego-centric behavior. The marketers already have a term for it, known as Consumer Centric.

Source: BBC

In simple words, consumer centric means that the world no longer revolves around the Sun, but around a person, an individual. It is as if the person is the single most important creature that exists and everything around him/her only serves as objects for his/her pleasure and benefit.

My takeaway from this phenomenon is

1. To know that the values of the world are ever changing
2. I may be living in this system (or society), but I can strive not to be like it

Some questions to ask yourself is

1. Is it wrong to be egocentric?
2. What would happen if everyone were to become obsessively egocentric?