planned obsolescence , or built-in obsolescence , in industrial and economic design is a policy for planning or designing products with an artificially limited, useful life that will become obsolete (ie , outdated or not working anymore) after a certain period of time. The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volumes by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle").
Manufacturers pursuing this strategy believe that the additional sales revenue creates more than offset the additional costs of research and development, and offsets the opportunity cost of repurposing existing product lines. In a competitive industry, this is a risky policy, because consumers can decide to buy from a competitor if they pay attention to strategy.
The planned nonconformities tend to work best when the producer has at least oligopoly. Before introducing planned obsolescence, producers should know that consumers are at least somewhat inclined to buy a replacement from them. In these obsolete planned cases, there is information asymmetry between producers, who knows how long the product is designed to last, and the consumer, who does not. As markets become more competitive, the product's life span tends to increase. For example, when Japanese vehicles with longer life spans entered the American market in the 1960s and 1970s, American automakers were forced to respond by building more durable products.
Video Planned obsolescence
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Alfred P. Sloan Jr.
In the United States, automotive design reached a turning point in 1924 when the American national car market began to reach saturation. To maintain unit sales, General Motors chairman Alfred P. Sloan Jr. suggest year-year model design changes to convince car owners that they need to buy a new replacement every year, an idea borrowed from the bicycle industry, although the concept is often misunderstood. to Sloan. Critics call his strategy "planned obsolescence". Sloan prefers the term "dynamic obsolescence".
This strategy has had a profound effect on car business, product design, and finally the American economy. The smaller players can not maintain the speed and cost of rearranging every year. Henry Ford did not like the change of year model because he held on to the engineer's notion of simplicity, economies of scale, and design integrity. GM surpassed Ford's sales in 1931 and became the dominant company in the industry thereafter. Frequent design changes also make it necessary to use body-on-frame rather than lighter ones, but less easy to modify, unibody designs used by most European car manufacturers.
Bernard London
The origins of phrase planned obsolescence at least return as far back as 1932 with the Bernard London pamphlet Ending Depression through the Planned Setback . The essence of London's plan will make governments impose legal obsolescence on consumer articles, to stimulate and perpetuate consumption.
Brooks Stevens
However, this phrase was first popularized in 1954 by Brooks Stevens, an American industrial designer. Stevens was scheduled to give a talk at an advertising conference in Minneapolis in 1954. Without thinking about it, he used the term as the title of his lecture. Since then, the "planned obsolescence" has become Stevens's slogan. By definition, the planned obsolescence is "Embedding the buyer the desire to have something a little newer, slightly better, a little faster than necessary."
Volkswagen
The sentence was quickly taken by others, but Stevens' definition was challenged. By the late 1950s, outdated plans had become a common term used for products designed to be easily damaged or quickly out of date. In fact, the concept was so widely known that in 1959 Volkswagen taunted it in an advertising campaign. While acknowledging the widespread use of planned obsolescence among automakers, Volkswagen has positioned itself as an alternative. "We do not believe in planned obsolescence", the advert suggested. "We do not change cars for change." In the famous Volkswagen ad campaign by Doyle Dane Bernbach, one ad shows a nearly empty page with strapline "There is no point in showing the 1962 Volkswagen, it still looks the same".
Vance Packard's The Waste Makers
In 1960, cultural critic Vance Packard published The Waste Makers , promoted as an exposure "a systematic business venture to make us wasteful, full of debt, permanently disgruntled individuals". Packard divides planned obsolescence into two sub categories:
- the obsolescence of desire; and
- functionality obsolescence.
"Curiosity of desire", a.k.a. "psychological obsolescence", refers to a marketer's attempt to use it in the mind of the owner. Packard cites industrial designer George Nelson, who writes: "Design... is an attempt to contribute through change.When no contribution is made or can be made, the only process available to illuminate change is 'styling!' "
Maps Planned obsolescence
Type
Resilience created
The lifetime endurance is a strategy to shorten the life of the product before it is launched into the market, by designing it to deteriorate rapidly. The design of all consumer products including the average age expected to absorb all stages of development. So, it should be decided at the beginning of the complex product design how long it is designed to last so that each component can be made according to those specifications. Since all matter is subject to entropy, it is impossible for objects designed to maintain its full function forever; all products will eventually break down, no matter what steps are taken. Although it is known that the product is optimized to fit the time period required, such designs are often selected for cost or weight savings reasons. A limited lifetime is only a sign of planned obsolescence if the age of the product is made short artificially.
Designed endurance strategies are generally not prohibited by law, and manufacturers are free to regulate the level of durability of their products.
A possible method to limit the durability of a product is to use inferior materials in a critical area, or a non-optimal component layout that causes excessive use. Using soft metals in screws and low-cost plastic as metal substitutes in stress-suppressing components increases the speed at which a product will become unable to operate through normal use and make it vulnerable to damage even from minor forms of abnormal use. For example, small and fragile plastic gears in toys are particularly vulnerable to damage if toys are roughly played, which can easily destroy key toy functions and force replacement purchases. The short life expectancy of smartphones and other handheld electronic devices is the result of constant use, fragile batteries, and the ability to easily damage them.
Preventive repair
A prime example of such a design is the single-use version of traditional long-lasting items, such as disposable cameras, where customers have to buy all new products after using them once. Such products are often designed to be impossible to serve; for example, a cheap "fast-paced" digital clock may have a casing that is only sealed at the factory, without the capabilities designed for users to access the interior without damaging the watches completely.
Other products may also contain design features intended to thwart fixes, such as Apple's "tamper-resistant" pentalobe screws that are not easily removed by common consumer tools. Front loading washing machines often have drum pads - critical mechanical components and easily fall off - permanently shaped into sinks, making it impossible to renew without replacing the entire bathtub. The cost of this repair may exceed the residual value of the appliance, forcing it to be removed.
According to Kyle Wieners, one of the founders of the online improvement community, the possible goal for such designs is to make repair costs comparable to replacement costs, or to prevent any form of product service at all. In 2012, Toshiba was criticized for issuing stop and stop letters to website owners who hosted their copyright manual, thus harming home and independent home improvement markets.
Some products contain batteries that can not be replaced by the user after they are damaged. While such designs can help make the device thinner, it can also be difficult to replace the battery without sending all the equipment for repair or purchasing a replacement.
Observed feelings
Obscurant desires or outdated styles occur when the designer changes the style of the product so that the customer will buy the product more often due to the desirable desirability of outdated items.
Many products are especially desirable for aesthetics rather than functional reasons. A real example of such a product is clothing. Such products undergo a cyclic desire called "cycle mode". By continuing to introduce new aesthetics, and retargeting or stopping old designs, manufacturers can "drive fashion cycles", allowing constant sales even if the original product remains fully functional. Sneakers is a popular fashion industry where this is prevalent - the Nike Air Max line of running shoes is a prime example where single shoe models are often produced for years, but the combination of color and material ("color path") changes every few months, or colors different are offered in different markets. This has the result of ensuring a constant demand for the product, although it remains essentially the same.
To a more limited extent this also applies to some consumer electronics products, where manufacturers will release products that are slightly updated on a regular basis and emphasize its value as a status symbol.
Systemic obsolescence
Systemic planned obsolescence is a deliberate attempt to make the product obsolete by changing the system used in such a way that makes its use continues to be difficult. Common examples of planned systemic obsolescence include not accommodating forward compatibility in software, or routinely changing screws or fasteners so that they can not be easily operated with existing tools.
Programmable description
In some cases, notifications can be combined with accidental product deactivation to prevent it from functioning, requiring buyers to purchase a replacement. For example, inkjet printer manufacturers use smart chips in their ink cartridges to prevent them being used after a certain limit (number of pages, time, etc.). Although the cartridges may still contain ink that can be used or can be refilled (with toner ink, up to 50 percent of the toner cartridge is often still full). This is "programmed obsolescence," in which no random component contributes to function decline.
In Jackie Blennis v. HP's class action settings, it is claimed that Hewlett Packard designed certain inkjet printers and cartridges to cover an undisclosed expiry date, and at this point consumers are prevented from using ink remaining on expired cartridges. HP disclaims this claim but agrees to discontinue use of certain messages, and to make certain changes to the disclosure on its website and its packaging, and to compensate affected consumers for a total credit up to $ 5,000,000 for future purchases from HP. Samsung manufactures printers that are programmed to stop functioning even though the printer is still working perfectly.
There are several solutions for users, for example, that will double the life of a printer that has stopped with a message to replace the imaging drum.
Advantages and disadvantages
Estimated planned obsolescence may influence a company's decision on product engineering. Therefore, companies can use the most inexpensive components that meet the projected lifetime of the product.
Also, for industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging buyers/putting them under pressure to buy faster if they still want a functioning product. These products can be purchased from the same manufacturer (replacement parts or newer models), or from competitors who may also rely on planned obsolescence. Especially in developed countries (where many industries already face saturated markets), this technique is often necessary for manufacturers to maintain their income levels.
While planned obsolescence appeals to producers, it can also harm society in the form of negative externalities. Constantly replacing products, rather than fixing them, creating more waste and pollution, using more natural resources, and generating more consumer spending. Planned obsolescence can thus negatively impact the environment on an aggregate basis. Even when planned obsolescence may help save scarce resources per unit produced, it tends to increase outputs in aggregate, because due to the law of supply and demand reduction of costs and prices will eventually result in an increase in demand and consumption. However, the negative environmental impact of planned obsolescence depends also on the production process.
There are also potential reactions from consumers who know that the manufacturer invests money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers may switch to producers (if any) that offer a more durable alternative.
Rule
By 2015, as part of a larger movement against planned obsolescence throughout the EU, France has passed laws requiring manufacturers of tools and vendors to declare the intended product range, and to inform consumers how long the spare parts for the product certain will be produced. Beginning in 2016, equipment manufacturers are required to repair or replace, free, any defective product within two years from the date of original purchase. This effectively creates a mandatory two-year warranty.
Criticism and supporters
Shortening the replacement cycle has criticism and support.
Philip Kotler argues that: "Many of the so-called obsolete planes are the work of competitive forces and technology in a free society - forces that lead to goods and services are increasing."
Critics such as Vance Packard claim the process was discarding and exploiting customers. With psychological obsolescence, resources are used to make changes, often cosmetic changes, which do not have great value for customers. Miles Park supports a new and collaborative approach between designers and consumers to challenge obsolescence in fast-moving sectors such as consumer electronics.
Some people, such as Ronny Balcaen, have proposed to create new labels to counter product quality degradation due to the planned obsolescence technique.
In the
softwareSoftware companies sometimes deliberately drop support for older technologies as countermeasures to force users to buy new products to replace obsolete ones. Most proprietary software will eventually reach the end of life - usually because support costs outweigh the revenue generated by supporting the old version - where the supplier will stop updating and support. Because free software and open source software can always be updated and maintained by others, users are not entirely dependent on proprietary vendors. Software left by the manufacturer with respect to manufacturer support is sometimes called abandonware .
In the academic world
Russell Jacoby, writing in the 1970s, observes that intellectual production has succumbed to the same pattern of planned obsolescence used by manufacturing firms to generate renewed demand for their products.
The application of planned obsolescence to thinking itself has the same benefits as its application to consumer goods; the new one is not only more luxurious than the old one, it fueled outdated social systems that prevented its successor by making the illusion that it was always new.
Camille Paglia features contemporary academic discourse influenced by French theories such as Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault as the academic equivalent of the brand name of consumerism. "Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault," he said, "are the academic equivalents of BMW, Rolex, and Cuisinart." Under the inspiration of the latest academic mode, academic planned obsolescence is to produce content with little achievement for the same reasons that fashion designers come out with new fashions.
Future
The planned non-conformity has been considered a necessity when it should stimulate consumption; However, this practice becomes a question. In 2015, the French Parliament decides and imposes a fine of up to 300,000 euros and a prison sentence of up to two years for producers who plan their product deaths in advance. This rule is not only relevant because of the sanctions set but also because it is the first time that the legislature openly acknowledges the existence of planned obsolescence. These techniques may include "a deliberate introduction of defects, weaknesses, schedules to quit, technical limitations, incompatibility or other barriers to improvement", reading texts on what can be considered as planned obsolescence.
The EU is also beginning to address this issue. The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), an advisory body of the European Union, announced in 2013 that it is studying "a total ban on planned obsolescence". It is said that replacing products that are designed to stop working within two or three years of their purchase is a waste of energy and resources and generate pollution. EESC hosted a round table in Madrid in 2014 on 'Best practices in an outdated domain and collaborative consumption' calling for sustainable consumption to be enshrined as consumer rights under EU law. Carlos Trias Pinto, president of the EESC Consultative Commission on Industrial Change supports "the introduction of a labeling system that demonstrates device durability, so that consumers have the possibility of choosing whether to buy cheap or more expensive, more durable products".
See also
- Artificial requests
- Durapolist
- Life span of household appliances
- Immortality
- Prognostics
- Settings to fail
References
Further reading
- Bernard London: Ending depression through planned obsolescence (1932)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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