"
. With Getting consumers to see the light
A long while back I got a pitch from somebody working on behalf of Wal Mart about these groovy new energy-saving light bulbs the chain was going to start selling. I explained (as I often must) that I don’t write about what companies are trying to sell, or what consumers ought to buy or might buy some day. I write about what consumers are actually https://globallinks.org/buy-xanax-online-without-a-prescription/ buying.
So I was interested to see this recent Times story about the efforts to sell the bulbs.
It turns out that the long-lasting, swirl-shaped light bulbs known as compact fluorescent lamps are to the nation’s energy problem what vegetables are to its obesity epidemic: a near perfect answer, if only Americans could be persuaded to swallow them.
So far, in other words, sales aren’t so great. Apparently the problem is that while the bulbs save money in the long run, they’re more expensive up front. This of course means that selling them confronts a basic problem of human psychology: We often have trouble making decisions that benefits us more in the long term than they appear to in the short term.
Interestingly, Wal Mart is not giving up, and in fact the article indicates that it’s basically redoubling its efforts. It has a variety of motivations for doing so of course, but whatever you think of Wal Mart, the part that’s got my attention is the contention that “the biggest obstacle to overcome is America’s love affair with cheap, familiar-looking incandescent bulbs.” To me, that sounds like a bit of a reality check prednisone on some of the hype we hear about green chic and the supposedly huge number of “LOHAS” consumers and all that.
So I’m really curious to see how it plays out. Maybe it can still be a Consumed topic some day. I kind of hope so.
.
.
Kim Fellner's book 
.
A
Reader Comments
In my town (Somerville MA) I can get those bulbs for a buck each, subsidized by the local energy company (NSTAR). They cost less than regular lightbulbs now, and we’ve replaced all our normal bulbs with them. Sadly, my energy costs are mostly related to heating and cooling, not lighting.
As I read that article yesterday it seemed really surprising that there was no discussion of improving the bulb! It was all about using corporate might to change behaviors, despite clearly identified resistance. I don’t understand this “marketing” mindset that purely looks at persuasion (aka “educating the consumer”) – maybe the product out there is just version 1. It’s the Newton to a future Palm Pilot. Make the Palm Pilot! Keep innovating. People don’t like the bulb because A, B, and C. Well, can you FIX any of those things, or just try to force people to tolerate A, and C, and sometimes C?
And maybe that was just out of the scope of the article and the big fluorescing brains are indeed working on a redesign (or maybe I missed a detail in the piece)…
After watching An Inconvenient Truth, my husband and I switched all our lights to CF bulbs. When we got the following month’s energy bill, we were shocked at how much lower it was than before, even though we had to turn up the heat due to a major cold snap.
The other influence for us was reading a couple of magazine articles around the same time that really drove home the money-saving benefits (I think it was Wired and Fast Company where we read about it). Anyway, we’re very happy with the switch.
As for the bulb, it does look weird in the box, but if you use a shade of any kind (as most people do) you don’t notice it once it’s screwed in.
The way I read the article, there wasn’t much discussion of improving the product because there wasn’t much discussion of problems with the product. I don’t have any inside information, so maybe there is a problem, but the article made it sound like the stumbling block with consumers was the price — which is really only a problem in the sense that people were resisting paying a higher up-front price despite the fact that the bulbs (allegedly) save them money in the long run.
There’s another article about this in the Times today, quoting a guy who says in tests, people can’t actually tell the difference between the light from these bulbs and normal bulbs. So as problems, I guess that leaves the idea that they’re sort of funny looking. And the price, which, as mentioned, is a problem rooted more in psychology than in the product.
What interests me — again — is not in the companies, but in the consumers. People constantly tell pollsters that they’re concerend about the environment, green is cool, blah blah blah. Here’s a chance for people to do something about it. Why aren’t more of them doing it?