Many people believe that some devices, cars and other equipment have too short lifespan. Allegedly, the manufacturers are forcing you to change them in this way. Is it true? That they are not doing them the way they should?
At the fire station in Livermore, California, the light still glows dimly. She is 115 years old. They even installed a separate webcam for her sake.
To our generation, the longevity of this Centennial Bulb may seem like a slap in the face. If a 19th century light bulb still shines, why do our state-of-the-art 20th and even 21st century bulbs only last a few years?
"Hundred Year Light" is often cited as evidence of a sinister business strategy known as planned obsolescence. Light bulbs and other examples of technology could easily survive decades, many argue, but it is much more profitable to create an artificial lifespan for them so that companies can profit again and again.
"Planned obsolescence is kind of a conspiracy theory," says Mohanbir Sawney, a marketing professor at Northwestern University.
Is this conspiracy theory true? Does planned obsolescence really exist?
Answer: yes, but with reservations. The cartoon depicting greedy companies shamelessly fleecing their customers is embroidered with gold thread. To a certain extent, planned obsolescence is an inevitable consequence of running a sustainable business that provides people with the products they need.
In this sense, planned obsolescence reflects a hungry consumer culture that industries have created for their own benefit, but not alone.
"Firms are simply responding to consumer tastes," says Judith Chevalier, a professor of finance and economics at Yale University. “I think sometimes businesses deceive the consumer in some way, but I think there are situations where the blame can be placed on the consumer.”
A striking example
Light bulbs provide the most popular example of planned obsolescence research.
Thomas Edison invented the commercially viable light bulb around 1880. These first incandescent lamps - including the Centenary Light - relied on carbon rather than tungsten filaments, which came into widespread use 30 years later.
(Scientists believe the reason for the Centennial Light's longevity is that its carbon filament is eight times thicker and therefore stronger than the thin metal wires in modern incandescent light bulbs.)
Initially, companies installed and maintained entire electrical systems to provide light in the wealthy homes of early adopters of this technology. Observing that consumers were not willing to pay for replacement units, light bulb manufacturers tried to make them as long-lasting as possible.
But that business model changed as the light bulb user base grew and became a mass market. Companies realized that they could make large sums of money by making replacement light bulbs and thereby forcing consumers to pay multiple times.
In the 1920s, the infamous “Phoebus cartel” (“Phoebus Cartel”) was born, which included leading light bulb manufacturers around the world, including the German Osram, the American Associated Electrical Industries and General Electric and others, whose joint decision was the life of light bulbs limited to 1000 hours. Details of this scam emerged decades later through government and journalistic investigations.
"This cartel is the most obvious example of planned obsolescence that has been documented," says Giles Slade, author of a book on technology obsolescence.
This practice has also surfaced in many other industries. For example, competition between General Motors and Ford in the automobile market in the 1920s led to the former company introducing the now familiar annual model updates.
GM has invented a way to get consumers to spend money on the latest, coolest car to please themselves and stroke their vanity in social circles. "It was a model for the entire industry," says Slade.
Although the term "planned obsolescence" only came into regular use in the 1950s, by then the strategy was already permeating consumer society.
Alive and healthy
In one form or another, from explicit to implicit, planned obsolescence continues to haunt us today. From durability with a catch where replacing fragile parts costs more than replacing the product entirely, to aesthetic enhancements that make older versions of a product less stylish, good manufacturers always have a trick up their sleeve that allows them to regularly visit customers' wallets.
To make it completely clear, let's look at smartphones. These devices are often thrown away after being used for several years.
Screens or buttons break, batteries die, operating systems and applications stop being supported and updated. The solution is always at hand: brand new phone models that are released every year and are claimed to be “the best.”
Slade cites printer cartridges as another example of blatant planned obsolescence. Microcircuits, light sensors or batteries can turn off the cartridge and stop “seeing” it long before its ink is actually used up, thereby forcing users to buy completely new and very expensive cartridges.
"There's no logical explanation for this," Slade says. “I don’t know why you can’t just buy a bottle of black paint (ink) and pour it into the tank.”
Looked at this way, planned obsolescence seems wasteful. According to Cartridge World, a company that recycles printer cartridges and offers cheap replacements, 350 million cartridges are thrown away each year in North America alone, many of which are not completely empty. Apart from waste, all this excess production is damaging to the environment.
Versatile view
While some examples of planned obsolescence are egregious, it would be too easy to condemn the practice as wrong.
On a macroeconomic scale, rapid turnover creates jobs and generally promotes growth—just imagine how much money people have made by selling and producing millions of smartphone cases, for example. In addition, the constant introduction of new features that can captivate old and new users improves the quality of products and promotes the development of innovation.
As a result of this vicious but virtuous cycle, industry has made countless goods cheap and accessible to almost anyone in the developed and even developing countries of the world. Many of us enjoy benefits of civilization that were unimaginable a hundred years ago.
“There is no doubt that people's quality of life has improved as a result of our consumer model,” Slade says. “Unfortunately, it is responsible for global warming and toxic waste.”
Often, planned obsolescence is not blatantly unfair and exploitative, since it benefits both the consumer and the manufacturer. Chevalier points out that companies tailor the durability of their products according to customer needs and expectations.
For example, children's clothing. “Who buys super durable clothes for their kids?” At different ages, children can outgrow their clothes in a matter of months. So, it would not be so bad to make these clothes not so durable, stain-resistant, stylish or God knows what else, designed for many years of use.
The same argument applies to consumer electronics. Relentless innovation and competition for market share means that underlying smartphone technology will continually improve, along with the development of faster processors, better cameras, and so on.
“If there ever was true obsolescence, it is inherent in the technology itself,” says Howard Tallman, an entrepreneur and head of the digital startup incubator 1871. “Technology will become obsolete, whether you like it or not.”
For this reason, many owners do not like to overpay for a smartphone, the battery of which in any case will not last more than three years. As technology advances rapidly, people are not willing to pay for extra device life or a longer-lasting battery.
A completely different picture is observed in the market for luxury goods. Users are willing to pay more for products that are handmade, more durable and have resale value—in fact, many expect their investments to gain value over time. "If you buy a Rolex, you know it's going to be with you for a very long time," says Slade.
In many ways, people need top-notch brands to stroke their egos and demonstrate their high social status. The reason for luxury is deeply social. Luxury goods are socially coded.
As the years go by, the features of a luxury version of an item may trickle down to the mass market as production becomes cheaper and consumers crave improvements. And that's not so bad: once-expensive safety features like airbags in cars are now ubiquitous. Everything again works in the interests of consumers.
The future of obsolescence
Likewise, although there are certainly examples to the contrary, some business academics believe that it is too much to think that companies are only thinking about how to precisely program a device to self-destruct.
“In a competitive market, product life expectancy is one of the things companies fight for,” says Chevalier. “For many products, consumers will be smart enough not to choose products that will soon become obsolete.”
Moreover, there are forces that could encourage manufacturers to extend the life of their products. In the car market, many people think about how quickly a car depreciates relative to others. In this particular area, cars remain on the roads much longer than they used to.
"For many years, the auto industry was a fashion-forward industry, with parts of cars going out of fashion after five years," Tallman says.
But that has changed: in the US, for example, the average age of a passenger vehicle on the road today is 11.4 years; in 1969 it was 5.1 years.
Thanks to Internet word of mouth, it's easier than ever to figure out how long your next purchase will last—and that applies to both light bulbs and cars.
As our horror at realizing how much waste our culture produces grows, consumer products may gain significant value in their lifespan. Google, for example, is developing a Project Ara smartphone that will have removable parts so that you don’t have to throw away the entire smartphone.
The Secret History of Planned Obsolescence!
“If a product is good, they stop producing it”
Hebpock's Law (from Murphy's Laws)
Why often does an item break as soon as the loan is repaid for it? Why does the printer stop printing one day and the battery on the iPod runs out? Why was the light on in one of the US fire stations? more than 100 years and survived two modern surveillance cameras? Why did you previously use nylon tights to tow a car, but now they tear after wearing them several times?
The other day I came across one about how a certain woman controls on a global scale production of all consumer goods. From light bulbs to cars, they have all these products under their control, regardless of manufacturer, country, competition, free market or political coloration.
Our role in this society is to buy goods we don’t need on credit. Our society is dominated by the so-called growth economy, the essence of which is not growth to satisfy consumer demands, but growth for the sake of growth. If consumers don't buy, the economy won't grow. Planned obsolescence is based on the consumer’s desire to purchase a slightly newer product, a little earlier than necessary. These are the basic tenets of the economics of so-called planned obsolescence.
− Our society is dominated by a growth economy, aimed not at satisfying consumer demands, but at growth for growth's sake, to constant growth, leading to unlimited growth of production, says Serge Latouche, a well-known critic of growth economics, who has described its mechanism in detail. – And in order to justify the volume of production growth, it is necessary to increase the volume of consumption. This system requires artificial demand created in three ways: advertising and credit.
- In this era, our role is only to buy goods we don’t need on credit. There's no logic to it, says another critic of planned obsolescence.
Critics of growth economics point out that it is short-lived because it is based on internal contradictions:
− Believing in the possibility of endless economic growth, that is, believing in the limitlessness of the earth’s resources, can either fool, or economist. The trouble is that now we have all become economists.
- Why do they release a new product every three minutes? Is this necessary? Many have already realized that they cannot continue to live like this. Although politicians encourage them to go to stores and buy goods as this is the best way to give a new boost to the economy.
Many people believe that some devices, cars and other equipment have a too short lifespan. Allegedly, the manufacturers are forcing you to change them in this way. Is it true? That they are not doing them the way they should? At the fire station in Livermore, California, the light still glows dimly. She is 115 years old. They even installed a separate webcam for her sake. To our generation, the longevity of this Centennial Bulb may seem like a slap in the face. If a 19th century light bulb still shines, why do our state-of-the-art 20th and even 21st century bulbs only last a few years?
"Hundred Year Light" is often cited as evidence of a sinister business strategy known as planned obsolescence. Light bulbs and other examples of technology could easily survive decades, many argue, but it is much more profitable to create an artificial lifespan for them so that companies can profit again and again. "Planned obsolescence is kind of a conspiracy theory," says Mohanbir Sawney, a marketing professor at Northwestern University.
Is this conspiracy theory true? Does planned obsolescence really exist?
Answer: yes, but with reservations. The cartoon, in which greedy companies shamelessly rob their customers, is sewn with gold thread. To a certain extent, planned obsolescence is an inevitable consequence of running a sustainable business that provides people with the products they need. In this sense, planned obsolescence reflects a hungry consumer culture that industries have created for their own benefit, but not alone.
"Firms are simply responding to consumer tastes," says Judith Chevalier, a professor of finance and economics at Yale University. “I think sometimes businesses deceive the consumer in some way, but I think there are situations where the blame can be placed on the consumer.”
Light bulbs provide the most popular example of planned obsolescence research.
Thomas Edison invented the commercially viable light bulb around 1880. These first incandescent lamps - including the Centenary Light - relied on carbon rather than tungsten filaments, which came into widespread use 30 years later. (Scientists believe the reason for the Centennial Light's longevity is that its carbon filament is eight times thicker and therefore stronger than the thin metal wires in modern incandescent light bulbs.)
Initially, companies installed and maintained entire electrical systems to provide light in the wealthy homes of early adopters of this technology. Observing that consumers were not willing to pay for replacement units, light bulb manufacturers tried to make them as long-lasting as possible.
But that business model changed as the light bulb user base grew and became a mass market. Companies realized that they could make large sums of money by making replacement light bulbs and thereby forcing consumers to pay multiple times. In the 1920s, the infamous “Phoebus cartel” (“Phoebus Cartel”) was born, which included leading light bulb manufacturers around the world, including the German Osram, the American Associated Electrical Industries and General Electric and others, whose joint decision was the life of light bulbs limited to 1000 hours. Details of this scam emerged decades later through government and journalistic investigations.
"This cartel is the most obvious example of planned obsolescence on the books," says Giles Slade, author of a book on technology obsolescence.
This practice has also surfaced in many other industries. For example, competition between General Motors and Ford in the automobile market in the 1920s led to the former company introducing the now familiar annual model update. GM has invented a way to get consumers to spend money on the latest, coolest car to please themselves and stroke their vanity in social circles. "It was a model for the entire industry," says Slade.
Although the term "planned obsolescence" only came into regular use in the 1950s, by then the strategy was already permeating consumer society.
Alive and healthy
In one form or another, from explicit to implicit, planned obsolescence continues to delight us today. From durability with a catch where replacing fragile parts costs more than replacing the product entirely, to aesthetic enhancements that make older versions of a product less stylish, good manufacturers always have a trick up their sleeve that allows them to regularly visit customers' wallets.
To make it completely clear, let's look at smartphones. These devices are often thrown away after being used for several years. Screens or buttons break, batteries die, operating systems and applications stop being supported and updated. The solution is always at hand: brand new phone models that are released every year and are claimed to be “the best.”
Slade cites printer cartridges as another example of blatant planned obsolescence. Microcircuits, light sensors or batteries can turn off the cartridge and stop “seeing” it long before its ink is actually used up, thereby forcing users to buy completely new and very expensive cartridges. "There's no logical explanation for this," Slade says. “I don’t know why you can’t just buy a bottle of black paint (ink) and pour it into the tank.”
Looked at this way, planned obsolescence seems wasteful. According to Cartridge World, a company that recycles printer cartridges and offers cheap replacements, 350 million cartridges are thrown away each year in North America alone, many of which are not completely empty. Apart from waste, all this excess production is damaging to the environment.
Versatile view
While some examples of planned obsolescence are egregious, it would be too easy to condemn the practice as wrong. On a macroeconomic scale, rapid turnover creates jobs and generally promotes growth - just imagine how much money people have made by selling and producing millions of smartphone cases, for example. In addition, the constant introduction of new features that can captivate old and new users improves the quality of products and promotes the development of innovation.
As a result of this vicious but virtuous cycle, industry has made countless goods cheap and accessible to almost anyone in the developed and even developing countries of the world. Many of us enjoy benefits of civilization that were unimaginable a hundred years ago.
“There is no doubt that people's quality of life has improved as a result of our consumer model,” says Slade. “Unfortunately, it is responsible for global warming and toxic waste.”
Often, planned obsolescence is not blatantly unfair and exploitative, since it benefits both the consumer and the manufacturer. Chevalier points out that companies tailor the durability of their products according to customer needs and expectations. For example, children's clothing. “Who buys super durable clothes for their kids?” At different ages, children can outgrow their clothes in a matter of months. So, it would not be so bad to make these clothes not so durable, stain-resistant, stylish or God knows what else, designed for many years of use.
The same argument applies to consumer electronics. Relentless innovation and competition for market share means that underlying smartphone technology will continually improve, along with the development of faster processors, better cameras, and so on.
“If there ever was true obsolescence, it is inherent in the technology itself,” says Howard Tallman, an entrepreneur and head of digital startup incubator 1871. “Technology will become obsolete, whether you like it or not.”
For this reason, many owners do not like to overpay for a smartphone, the battery of which in any case will not last more than three years. As technology advances rapidly, people are not willing to pay for extra device life or a longer-lasting battery.
A completely different picture is observed in the market for luxury goods. Users are willing to pay more for products that are handmade, more durable and have resale value—in fact, many expect their investment to gain value over time. "If you buy a Rolex, you know it's going to be with you for a very long time," says Slade.
In many ways, people need top-notch brands to stroke their egos and demonstrate their high social status. The reason for luxury is deeply social. Luxury goods are socially coded.
As the years go by, the features of a luxury version of an item may trickle down to the mass market as production becomes cheaper and consumers crave improvements. And that's not so bad: once-expensive safety features like airbags in cars are now ubiquitous. Everything again works in the interests of consumers.
The future of obsolescence
Likewise, although there are certainly examples to the contrary, some business academics believe that it is too much to think that companies are only thinking about how to precisely program a device to self-destruct.
“In a competitive market, product life expectancy is one of the things that companies fight for,” says Chevalier. “For many products, consumers will be smart enough not to choose products that are about to become obsolete.”
Moreover, there are forces that could encourage manufacturers to extend the life of their products. In the car market, many people think about how quickly a car depreciates relative to others. In this particular area, cars remain on the roads much longer than they used to.
"For many years, the auto industry was a fashion-forward industry, with parts of cars going out of fashion after five years," Tallman says. But that has changed: in the US, for example, the average age of a passenger vehicle on the road today is 11.4 years; in 1969 it was 5.1 years.
Thanks to Internet word of mouth, it's now easier than ever to figure out how long your future purchase will last—and that goes for light bulbs as well as cars.
As our horror at realizing how much waste our culture produces grows, consumer products may gain significant value in their lifespan. Google, for example, is developing a Project Ara smartphone that will have removable parts so that it doesn't have to throw away the entire smartphone.
Very often I hear from friends and acquaintances that this or that equipment or gadget broke down as soon as the warranty period expired. I sometimes ask my friends which company should I take? And they answer me, yes, it will be completed before the warranty period and that’s it. Moreover, lately I’ve been hearing about the same thing about cars. They say the service life of the engine and components has expired and that’s it, repairing the car is difficult and practically unprofitable. Scrap!
Personally, I didn’t keep such statistics, but there is a company called iFixit, which has been campaigning for the maintainability of equipment for many years.
Here's what she can do...
iFixit rightly points out that manufacturers benefit from planned obsolescence of gadgets. It is beneficial for them that the consumer throws away broken equipment rather than repairing it. They want people to constantly buy new smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers. Manufacturers even calculate how often consumers should buy new gadgets. For example, he must change smartphones every 1.5 years.
Firstly, such consumerism hits people’s pockets. Modern man is forced to work more than his ancestors did a hundred years ago - just to afford to constantly change gadgets, cars and other things. Secondly, writes iFixit, constantly changing gadgets instead of repairing increases the amount of electronic waste.
iFixit has a long history of rating gadgets based on repairability, so this time it partnered with Greenpeace to review and rate 44 devices from 17 different manufacturers, including Apple, Google and Samsung. The ratings take into account the ease of disassembly, the availability of spare parts and the availability of repair manuals for equipment. The final test results are presented in the summary chart.
As you can see, for the most part, devices are still at the top of the rating. This means that many gadgets still retain a high degree of maintainability. But the study also gives reasons for pessimism. The situation appears to be changing for the worse, with many new devices already having below-average ratings. In other words, the market is leaning towards less repairable technology.
Among all the tested equipment, the most repairable equipment was laptops. This is good because they are usually expensive and last a long time for their owners. True, Apple with its line of difficult-to-repair laptops and Microsoft with the Surface Book stand out worse from this rule. But it should be noted that Apple is working on bugs and iPhone smartphones are quite easy to repair.
Among all tested devices, 70% are equipped with batteries that are difficult to replace, and very few (only 7%) are designed for the battery to be replaced by the user himself. Experts note that if the battery cannot be replaced, then it is a matter of several years when the device will need to be constantly kept at the outlet. That's why iFixit has always advocated for minimal adhesive when attaching the battery and the use of removable adhesive sheets.
Representatives from iFixit believe that the maintainability of technology is very important in all respects: “Sure, our gadgets are getting thinner and lighter, but they still require huge amounts of natural resources, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and consume a lot of energy throughout their life cycle. All this for devices that are specifically designed to last only a couple of years.”
Truly good gadgets shouldn't be designed for planned obsolescence. They should last a long time, says iFixit. And this means special attention to maintainability and upgradability, that is, upgradeability. In addition, those devices that are easier to disassemble into parts are also easier to dispose of later, that is, to be recycled in parts. So, reusing, repairing and recycling parts at a time is a smarter approach than just buying a new gadget.
“Together we can change the system too: join the hundreds of thousands of people around the world who are demanding that leading IT companies like Apple, Samsung and others rethink our technologies and design products that last longer and do not sacrifice the planet.” writes Greenpeace, promoting the petition.
iFixit encourages buyers to check the repairability rating before purchasing equipment, because this ultimately determines the cost of owning the device. Will you need to buy a new gadget if the screen is broken - or can you just change the glass?
See repairability rating smartphones, tablets And laptops .
Here are some reviews on this topic that you can often find in comments on the Internet:
What about household appliances? For example, hefty refrigerators that die after 5-6 years and cannot be repaired...
5-6 years is still good
usually 3-4 years.
I personally have come across this more than once.
bought Monique in 2007
Almost exactly under the 3-year warranty period, Monique died.
Fixed under warranty
Somehow I got some money and bought the RAM for $400. Well, the RAM, or rather one stick, died just before the end of the warranty period.
I recently repaired my drill
If I had known back then in the 90s, I would have just bought a drill without an impact hammer.
It’s a pity that I didn’t press the record button when the smoke started coming out.
I thought it was a collector. The brushes wear out and wear out. I looked at modern drills, and the engine is no longer in its own housing, but in the body of the drill.
Well, let me remind you:
...The subway car is as crowded as a jar of pickled plums. He loved pickled plums. In childhood. Now there are no _real_ plums. Now the main food is “Pups” biscuits. Everyone in the carriage is chewing these biscuits. They are always chewed. From morning till night. The famous non-satiating biscuits "Pups". Factories synthesizing biscuits operate around the clock. “Pups biscuits renew muscles, thin bile and expand atoms throughout the body...” How could it not be so! There is a simple calculation here - it is more profitable to sell a train of rubbish than a truckload of real food... In the mouth, the biscuits quietly squeak "boobs... bobbleheads..." and then... evaporate. It’s like biting through your teeth small rubber balls inflated with 100% air...
...He took off his glasses and squinted myopically, wiping the glass with a paper handkerchief. Price is lucky! The guy in green wore cheap, fast-fading glasses—a week after buying them you couldn’t even see your own nose. The same Universal Trading Principle - fragile things are bought more often. Even if they buy it cheaply, they buy it more and more often. Monthly, then weekly, daily, hourly...
The sheathing is a bundle!.. Price went cold. How could he forget about her! The casing is cracked on the top and sides and is falling apart before everyone's eyes! Another second - and it’s over!.. No, no! Everything is fine! Everything goes well! After all, he wrapped IT in a piece of an old tarpaulin cape that his grandfather used to cover his truck. Only the outside of IT is wrapped in a quick-expanding one-day bag, and the inside is a durable tarpaulin. An excellent piece of tarpaulin, now it has no price, it was inherited, another piece was bequeathed by my grandfather to Madi. An old tarpaulin reliably hides the contents of the package.
Elegant boots with quick-wearing soles had fallen apart like the peel of a rotten banana. Self-release cufflinks and self-tearing buttons rained down like plastic hail.
He was half naked and was dragging himself towards the nearest vending machines. He dropped the coins and stuck his arms, legs and neck into the semicircular holes. The automatons put on him one-day boots, glued a disposable collar to his shirt, fastened his lost cufflinks, sealed the holes with a quick-peel plaster and handed him a fashionable “Wear-and-Throw-Away” hat. As the machine swallowed the coin with a cheerful grinding sound, a powerful speaker shouted: “Everything-For-You-At-One-Time, Everything-For-You-At-One-Time.” The iron guys were selling fragile cheap things... One-day items. Reliable as a rope made of dough. Long-lasting, like a piece of ice on a hot fryer.
/Boris Zubkov, Evgeny Muslin. Fragile, fragile, fragile world.../
sources
Planned, planned, or planned obsolescence is the deliberate design of a product so that it becomes obsolete or unusable after a certain time. Obsolescence is built into a wide variety of products, from bicycles and lamps to buildings and commercial software. It is one of the flaws of the capitalist system.
Planned obsolescence has a potential benefit for the manufacturer because its product breaks and the consumer is forced to buy the product again, either from the same manufacturer (replacement part or newer model) or from a competitor who may also resort to planned obsolescence.
The purpose of planned obsolescence is to hide the real cost (information asymmetry) of using a product from the consumer and to inflate the price of the product more than consumers are willing to pay (or willing to spend at one time).
For industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand, encouraging buyers to buy sooner if they want a functioning product.
There is, however, a backlash from consumers who learn that the manufacturer has invested money (their money) in making the product obsolete faster; such consumers could choose a manufacturer (if one exists) that offers a more reliable alternative.
Planned obsolescence was first developed in the 1920s and 1930s, when large-scale production took place and every minute of the production process was analyzed.
Estimates of planned obsolescence can influence a company's product development decisions. The company can use the cheapest components, which, however, will be sufficient for the planned life of the product. Such decisions are part of a broader discipline known as functional cost analysis.
The use of planned obsolescence is not always easy to pinpoint and is associated with other issues such as competing technologies or feature additions that extend functionality in newer versions of the product.
From this point on, "planned obsolescence" became Stevens' catchphrase. By his definition, planned obsolescence "instills in the buyer a desire to have something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than necessary."
In 1960, cultural critic Vance Packard published the book "Unnecessary Producers," meaning producers who participate in "the systematic effort of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, long-lasting dissatisfied people."
Vance Packard divided planned obsolescence into two additional categories: desirable obsolescence and functional obsolescence. “Desirable obsolescence,” also called “psychological obsolescence,” referred to attempts by merchants to obliterate a product in the mind of the owner. Designer George Nelson wrote: “The project... is an attempt to contribute through change. When no contribution is made or can be made in the only process available to give the illusion of change (change of style).”
The idea behind the strategy is to increase sales by reducing the time between purchases (due to short replacement cycles). Firms pursuing this strategy believe that the added sales will give them more than the losses from additional investments in research and redesign of production lines. This is not an undeniable advantage: in a competitive industry, this can generally be a risky strategy because the user may decide to buy from a competitor. Therefore, with this strategy, the manufacturer must fool customers on the instant cost of use compared to the competitor.
Shortening the replacement cycle has both many critics and many supporters. Critics such as Vance Packard say short replacement cycles increase resource utilization and exploit customers. Resources are spent on purely cosmetic changes that are not very important to the client. Proponents argue that it accelerates technological progress and promotes material prosperity. They argue that the market structure of planned obsolescence and rapid innovation may be favored over durable products and slow innovation. In a fast-changing competitive industry, market success requires that products be made obsolete sooner, with replacements being actively developed. And waiting for a competitor to make a product obsolete is a sure guarantee of future defeat.
The main point of opponents of planned obsolescence is not the existence of this process, but its delay. They are concerned that technology improvements are not being applied even though they could be. They are concerned that firms may refrain from developing new products, or delay their introduction, because the new product functionally replaces an older product. For example, if the payback period for a product is five years, a firm might refrain from creating a new product for at least those five years even though it may be possible for them to begin production in three years. This deferment is only feasible in monopolistic or oligolic markets. In more competitive markets, competing firms will take advantage of this delay and begin producing their own goods.
The design of most products includes an expected average life of the product, which influences all further stages of development. Because of this, it is necessary to decide early (especially in a complex project) how long it will all be designed for, so that every part can be made to this requirement. (perhaps it is sometimes worth abandoning such early decisions).
Planned obsolescence makes the cost of repair comparable to the cost of replacement (after a planned period of time) or the product will not be serviced in whole or in part. A certain product may generally be designed to be service-free (even though this may still be possible). Creating new lines for a product that is incompatible (that's the compatibility problem) for some reason with the old product quickly makes the old product obsolete, which forces its replacement.
Planned functional obsolescence is a type of technical obsolescence in which companies introduce new technology that completely replaces the old one. Old products do not have the same functionality as new ones. For example, a company that sold VCRs while simultaneously developing DVD recorders was engaging in planned obsolescence. It actively planned to make its existing product (video cassettes) obsolete by developing a replacement (recordable DVDs) with greater functionality (better recording quality). Related products, which are necessary additions (complements) to old products, also become obsolete with the introduction of new products. For example, video cassette holders faced the same fate as video cassettes and VCRs.
Portable consumer electronics often run on specially designed lithium batteries. Before the battery begins to quickly lose capacity, it can last about 500 charge-discharge cycles.
Lithium batteries are quite capricious, and in order to prevent overcharging and explosion, they always have a charge-control microcircuit built into them. This circuit keeps track of battery statistics to determine its current full charge point. But the manufacturer may choose an overly conservative algorithm for it, or even base this algorithm on the average f(t) model, and not on the actual behavior of the battery cells - so that by the end of its life the battery may be significantly undercharged. In addition, the production of spare batteries stops simultaneously with the production of the goods for which they are needed - all this forces the replacement of equipment with new ones.
Technically advanced people reset the battery status data recorded in the chip and repack the batteries - this increases service life. The cost of the procedure is comparable to the price of a new battery.
Planned system obsolescence is a deliberate attempt to make a product obsolete by changing the system in which it is used in such a way as to make its long-term use difficult.
New versions of programs, for example, are often incompatible with older versions.
The lack of well-thought-out compatibility between program versions forces many users to upgrade to new versions of the program just for compatibility with them (cf. vendor lock-in).
The more network-oriented the software market is, the more effective this strategy is.
On the other hand, hardware developers often specifically do not allow backward compatibility with older versions, for example, this applies to old interchangeable cartridges and all kinds of commercial connectors (data transfer between devices and processor sockets, for example).
Another way to introduce system obsolescence is to deny service and support to the product. When a product breaks, the user is forced to buy a new product. However, this strategy rarely works because there are usually third parties who are technically and organizationally capable of servicing and supporting the product. This strategy works in non-free (proprietary) software, where copyright prohibits these resourceful third parties from certain types of service.
One example of this type of obsolescence is Microsoft ending support for its operating systems.
Similarly, Apple Inc created Mac OS X (a development of the NeXT operating system from 1997), which is based on Unix and is incompatible with previous versions of the company's operating systems (although some compatibility has been maintained over the years).
This strategy may have an unintended consequence; if a user is not dependent on a particular proprietary system, they may switch to another system in hopes of longer-term support.
Marketing can also be driven by aesthetic design. Product categories are displayed in this case as a fashion cycle. By continually introducing a new fashion, and changing or discontinuing another, a manufacturer can ride the fashion cycle.
Fashion-driven product categories include automobiles with their roster of new models each year, the completely style-driven clothing industry (ridden by fashion cycles); and the mobile phone industry with its constantly updated extensions and style changes.
Planned style obsolescence occurs when marketers change the style of a product so that the user buys the product more frequently. The styling change is done so that those who own the old model will feel "outdated". This is also done so that it is possible to distinguish the product from its competitor, which reduces the price fight between them.
An example of styling obsolescence is the automobile industry, in which a manufacturer typically makes styling changes every year or two. General Motors President Alfred Sloan stated in 1941: “Today the introduction of a new automobile is the most important factor from the point of view of final sales, perhaps from the point of view of business it is the most important factor, since everyone knows that the car will run.”
Some marketers go one step further: they try to create fashion. Successfully created fashions include: Beanie Babies (stuffed toys, the ancestor of the Happy Meal), Ninja Turtles, Cabbage Patch Kids and pet rocks (stuffed toys), acid-colored jeans and tank tops.
Obsolescence is built into these products in the sense that marketers are aware of the shortness of their product life cycles, so they work within that constraint.
When sales of Beanie Babies began to decline, company president Ty Warner decided to introduce them one last Christmas and then get rid of them.
Another strategy is to take advantage of a type of change often called the fashion cycle. The cycle of fashion is reintroduction, rise, popular culmination, and decline of style, and it works across different social groups. Marketers who ride fashion cycles change or mix styles to appeal to different market segments. This is very common in the clothing industry. A certain style of clothing will initially be aimed at a very expensive segment of the market, but it will be gradually reconfigured to make that style of clothing available at a lower cost. The fashion cycle can repeat itself when a stylistically outdated product can regain popularity and therefore cease to be outdated.
Some companies are developing another type of obsolescence, in which the product informs the user that it is time to purchase a replacement. For example, water filters display a notification after a certain time when they need to be replaced, and replacement razors have a stripe that changes color.
Whether the user receives this information before actual product deterioration occurs, or whether the product simply degrades faster than necessary, the result will still be planned obsolescence.
In this way, planned obsolescence can be implemented without the company developing a “more modern” replacement product.
In some cases, a deprecation notice may be combined with an intentional disabling of the product, once again forcing the user to purchase a replacement.
Some inkjet printer manufacturers use a commercial "smart" chip in cartridges to prevent them from being used beyond a certain threshold (number of pages, time, etc.), even though the cartridge may still contain usable ink or may filled with this ink again. Also, these manufacturers introduce designs into printers, such as spring claws for reading information from chips, which inevitably break after a certain number of cartridge changes.
Some medical devices also use this technique to ensure a steady stream of revenue from sales of replacement consumables.
Before introducing planned obsolescence, the manufacturer should at least know how likely it is that the user will buy a replacement from them.
In the case of planned obsolescence, there is an information difference between the manufacturer, who knows how long the product will be produced and supported, and the end user, who does not.
As the market becomes more competitive, the trend begins to increase product life.
When long-lasting Japanese cars hit the American market in the 1960s and 1970s, American manufacturers were forced to respond with longer-lasting new vehicles.
There are some industries with sufficient competition where the consumer will choose those products that will become obsolete more quickly in any case. All that is needed for this is a higher probability of replacing the product with a product from the same manufacturer than the probability that the user will choose a product from this manufacturer initially.
Even in a situation where planned obsolescence is chosen by both the manufacturer and the consumer, there may also be significant harm to society in the form of negative consequences. Continuing to replace, rather than repair, a product creates far more waste, pollution, and uses far more natural resources, leading to increased consumer spending.
The answer to this could be a more experienced user who is able to give a more technically-preserving solution based on his knowledge of the world, acting with the latest equipment like a person who knows the true value of old equipment, since the desire for the newest will inevitably shift the home budget to a more expensive one. area, while the use of old things where replacing them is not functionally justified is a strategy, perhaps more oriented towards life.
These user strategies can resist imposed obsolescence.
Others defend planned obsolescence as a necessary driver of innovation and economic growth.
Many products, such as DVDs, are becoming cheaper and more useful, and more common, than videotapes ever were. Planned obsolescence also tends to benefit companies with cutting-edge products, so it makes sense to make encouraging additional investments in research and development for products that often look pretty good.
If marketers expect a product to become obsolete, they can produce it to last a specific life. If a product becomes technically or stylistically obsolete in 5 years, then many manufacturers will only produce it for that period of time. This is done through a process called functional cost analysis. For example, home entertainment electronics are built with moving components, like motors and gears, that will not become obsolete until technical or stylistic innovations render the entire electronics obsolete. These parts could have been produced with more expensive components (re-engineered), but they are not produced with them because it adds unnecessary cost to the product, a cost that is paid by the buyer.
Functional cost analysis reduces the cost of goods and lowers the price for buyers.
A company will typically use less expensive components that satisfy the product's calculated lifespan.
The use of functional cost analysis methods has led to planned obsolescence, which is also associated with the deterioration of products and a decrease in their quality. Vance Packard argues that this can give engineers a bad name because it directs the engineers' creative energies toward a short-term market goal rather than toward a higher, more interesting technical goal.
Software companies are sometimes thought to deliberately stop supporting older technologies as a calculated attempt to force users to buy new products to replace outdated ones.
Most commercial software will eventually reach an end-of-life point at which the manufacturer will stop updating and supporting it. But because free software can always be updated and maintained by the end user, the user is not just at the mercy of some corporation.
Planned obsolescence causes direct harm to the environment:
