If your business involves selling  – in fact selling anything – and you are looking to see where things are heading in the future, you’d do well to spend ten minutes reading this gem of an article about an interesting change in consumer spending:

“I think there’s a real opportunity in retail to be able to romance the experience again,” says Ms. Liebmann. “Retailers are going to have to work very hard to create that emotional feeling again. And it can’t just be ‘Here’s another thing to buy.’ It has to have a real sense of experience to it.”

via Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness – NYTimes.com.

And if you want evidence of how it actually plays out in real life, then look n further than the Baa Code:

Icebreaker, a clothing company specialising in merino wool garments says it wants to openly show customers its commitment to sustainability and environmental friendly practice. Each garment now sports a “baa code” – a number that retailers and consumers can input at Icebreaker.com to see how the garment was made from start to finish.

Enter the Baa Code from your garment on the IceBreaker website and the resulting page tells you the story about the farm where the wool came from, the famers and so much more.

In short, it creates an experience for the buyer, and an experience that cannot be replicated by another country.  Very clever.