• by Julie Fleischer , May 1, 2009

As you may remember, Aesop's "the Ant and the Grasshopper" is a tale extolling the virtues of work and saving that showcased the wisdom of sacrificing the indiscriminate pleasures of the present for the security of the future. A good day tomorrow is worth two good days today. However, given today's economic realities, not everyone would agree.

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, Harvard professor and author of Happier, has created a framework for understanding different archetypes of happiness, based on how one approaches the balance of present and future benefits. He types people as Hedonists, Nihilists, Rat-Racers and Happiers.

Applying this concept to consumers helps us to better understand the motivations and behaviors that cause people to buy, even during a down economy.

The chart might look like this:
In this scenario, the upper left-hand quadrant - Savers - represents people saving for retirement, focusing more on the next chapter of their lives than the current one. "When I retire, I'll travel..." This is a group that's been trained, like the ant, to save for a rainy day.

For years, this has been the key marketing message of most investment firms, financial advisors and parents. It's smart to live well within your means and invest for the future.

The bottom right-hand quadrant - Spenders - is the realm of the young and impulsive. It's almost impossible to teach someone right out of college the value of saving for retirement or the wisdom of insurance. When you've got money for the first time in your life, you spend it.

Scrapers just get by, but Splicers - those who are able to balance the competing needs of the present and the future - lie somewhere between investment-minded Savers, and instant gratification-seeking Spenders.

With a market that looks - at best - to go sideways for a number of years, we are hearing those who've been traditionally Savers and traditionally Splicers - regardless of income - echo the same point of view: "Maybe, if I've got some money, I'd be better off spending it than investing it. Maybe I should live a little better today." It's a state of mind, not of pocketbook.

Now let's be clear, this isn't going to be everyone's takeaway, nor should it. But what if some of the industries that we'd expect to be hardest hit by the economic situation applied this framework of looking for those open to shifting from Savers to Spenders?

What if Detroit targeted this group? Automakers have an opportunity to sell to the Spenders, as well as the Savers who are disheartened by new economic realities, and no longer see as much value in saving as they once did. These are the ones who choose to buy the car now, if they can afford it.

It's easy to become a nihilist in this type of environment, as conventional wisdom (and perhaps our own behaviors) leads us to believe very few people will be willing to spend on nonessentials in the coming months.

But in every downturn there are always pockets of resilience - consumers who see the world a little differently. Perhaps not with rose-colored glasses, but with a different mental calculus of present and future benefit. The perceptual benefit horizon framework allows us to find the consumers who share this different worldview.