Here Today, Gone Apple Case Study
2) Planned Obsolescence
The release of every new iPhone to date has been preceded by impressive presentations by either the late Steve Jobs or by Tim Cook, generating great anticipation over the launch of the new iPhone. Certainly, the newer iPhones often boast improvements from previous models but Apple has also been infamous for planned obsolescence in the form of the lightning cables which have a limited lifespan (Bradley, 2015) and the removal of the quintessential headphone jack in the iPhone 7 (Spence, 2016).
Bulow (1986) defined planned (or built-in) obsolescence in industrial design and economics as the policy of designing a product, to deliberately limit its lifespan, and cause it to become obsolete after some time. This obsolescence …show more content…
This slogan highlights the urgency of the buying of goods for consumers before they lose the opportunity to purchase it. It was noted that higher profit margins resulted from shortening the lifecycle of the apparel with some retailers bypassing the markdown process entirely (Sydney, 2008), nodding in the direction of planned obsolescence.
Therefore, planned obsolescence could be disadvantageous to the consumer by increasing their overall expenditure and by compelling them to make impulse purchases on products that are ‘Here Today, [and possibly] Gone Tomorrow’.
Being contented with one’s existing material possessions
New products tend to attract our curious minds but could be problematic for us consumers given that they may have been launched prematurely and/or be part of a marketing ploy to increase our spending. With an awareness of how new may not always be better, we could attribute greater value to our existing possessions, as long as they still functional and/or fit us …show more content…
The adaptation theory posits that people would contrast present levels of stimulation against the level of stimulation to which their prior history has accustomed them (Brickman, Coates & Janoff-Bulman, 1978). Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman’s study has become a classic after they found, quite counter-intuitively, that lottery winners were not happier than those who did not win. This theory has since been revised to form the hedonic treadmill model where people are briefly affected by good and bad events but would adapt rapidly to revert back to hedonic neutrality. More recently, Diener, Lucas and Scollon (2006), assert that people adapt to events in a variety of ways, with some having unchanging set points while others altered their set points, in response to external events. Therefore, buying new product would influence different consumers in different ways and there is no-one-sized-fits-all approach to seeking pleasurable experiences. We are responsible for our individual set points. As a result, it is crucial for an individual to be content in his/her own way with what he/she
The release of every new iPhone to date has been preceded by impressive presentations by either the late Steve Jobs or by Tim Cook, generating great anticipation over the launch of the new iPhone. Certainly, the newer iPhones often boast improvements from previous models but Apple has also been infamous for planned obsolescence in the form of the lightning cables which have a limited lifespan (Bradley, 2015) and the removal of the quintessential headphone jack in the iPhone 7 (Spence, 2016).
Bulow (1986) defined planned (or built-in) obsolescence in industrial design and economics as the policy of designing a product, to deliberately limit its lifespan, and cause it to become obsolete after some time. This obsolescence …show more content…
This slogan highlights the urgency of the buying of goods for consumers before they lose the opportunity to purchase it. It was noted that higher profit margins resulted from shortening the lifecycle of the apparel with some retailers bypassing the markdown process entirely (Sydney, 2008), nodding in the direction of planned obsolescence.
Therefore, planned obsolescence could be disadvantageous to the consumer by increasing their overall expenditure and by compelling them to make impulse purchases on products that are ‘Here Today, [and possibly] Gone Tomorrow’.
Being contented with one’s existing material possessions
New products tend to attract our curious minds but could be problematic for us consumers given that they may have been launched prematurely and/or be part of a marketing ploy to increase our spending. With an awareness of how new may not always be better, we could attribute greater value to our existing possessions, as long as they still functional and/or fit us …show more content…
The adaptation theory posits that people would contrast present levels of stimulation against the level of stimulation to which their prior history has accustomed them (Brickman, Coates & Janoff-Bulman, 1978). Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman’s study has become a classic after they found, quite counter-intuitively, that lottery winners were not happier than those who did not win. This theory has since been revised to form the hedonic treadmill model where people are briefly affected by good and bad events but would adapt rapidly to revert back to hedonic neutrality. More recently, Diener, Lucas and Scollon (2006), assert that people adapt to events in a variety of ways, with some having unchanging set points while others altered their set points, in response to external events. Therefore, buying new product would influence different consumers in different ways and there is no-one-sized-fits-all approach to seeking pleasurable experiences. We are responsible for our individual set points. As a result, it is crucial for an individual to be content in his/her own way with what he/she