Norwegian shops selling clothes, shoes, jewelry and handbags of the highest quality and highest price, is experiencing tremendous growth. At the same time preparing for a downturn they are convinced that must come as a result of the emerging downturn in the Norwegian economy in general and in the oil sector in particular.
– We brakes slightly on our purchases to prepare for the crisis, says Sales and HR director Anette Qvale Patrocollo clothing chain Høyer to Dagens Næringsliv Saturday.
It sounds like a sensible reasoning. If the Norwegian economy goes bad and people have less to spend, it is of course luxury consumption as bust first.
Or is it really?
Behavioral Scientists know a lot about the mechanisms that are otherwise sensible people to pay the white of the eye to hedge a commodity it oozes exclusivity and luxury of.
Read: – Bags and watches acts as identity accessories
Researchers in Norway have so far not penetrated, or had the opportunity to study how declining income affects luxury consumption. Our income and purchasing power’ve risen almost uninterrupted since we found oil.
But here you will get a theory. It is based on personal experiences and observations must in no way be confused with research. The basis of the theory I have from a country few people in Norway have been in, and many barely heard of. We go as far as to London, just to the east.
Dit where people – unlike in Norway – know how an empty wallet looks. Belarus, the country where time has almost stood still since the fall of the USSR, where every town has its Lenin statue and the state-controlled TV broadcasts send non-stop coverage of all the president is doing – framed by the national anthem that opens broadcast in the morning and concludes the evening.
Europe prettiest poor
On the way there, some central background statistics. Norwegians with fulltime now serves an average of 42,300 crowns a month, ie approximately 500,000 per year, according to Statistics Norway. By comparison, the average salary of Belarusians 3,634 per month or 43,614 per year, according to National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus. Thus less than one tenth of their finances.
But you can see it on people? Hardly.
I’ve visited the country many times. And believe me: When you wander along the spotlessly clean streets between monumental, lit buildings and watching people strolling past, there is not much that reveals that this is one of Europe’s poorest countries.
I was there last June. There sat the young guys on the bench with their own smartphone, surfed and laughed. Women are as always mostly in skirts and high heels, with a pretty bag over his shoulder, impeccably dressed as if everyone was on the way to or from a very decent, well-paid job.
Had it not been for pubs, would barber, pedikyr- and manicure-lounge wall-in-wall.
And here we are at the crux. White Russians have hardly money, but they spend most of it as giving the impression that they are not as poor as they are in reality.
Women in skirts, men in jogging suit
For women part, it’s already pretty clothes, makeup, hair and external appearance that matters. For men it is mobile phones and cars – not clothing. Absolutely not clothes, actually. A fairly typical men’s attire is jogging suit. They buy one – preferably on the used market – and it has the until it is exhausted or too small. What little they have the money they use mobile or car – albeit gets most can not afford more than a used car no matter how much they scrimp and save. But God knows they try. Only consumption expenditure they allocate themselves, are beer and vodka. But it is in return not particularly expensive than in Norway even if one adjusts for the low income. A pint at the pub can be obtained from a fiver, a bottle of vodka around 30 million.
What really is ridiculously cheap public transport. A bus ticket costs 1 penny and 25 cents. An option with more frequent departures are private minibuses. They cost a staggering three crowns to take – and therefore many choose instead to wait for the public. For reasons you probably already guess.
Many other things are equally expensive in Belarus as in other European countries. Groceries for example. Not as expensive as in Norway – it should have taken out – but still about as in Sweden or maybe Germany. To buy housing must be out of 10,000 crowns the square outside the city, 14,000 in the cities. Fortunately for Belarusians are not the property an important status symbol – they still live in apartments they were granted by the Soviet Union – and sharing in no way Norwegians leisure hobby number one, refurbishment. They can not allow themselves whether they should afford a car, nice clothes and smartphones.
Check here Greece: This is saving discipline
Your life is all about priorities. Tough priorities – and a savings discipline that would put German Chancellor Angela Merkel blank eyes. Ref. buses over. People waiting actually for the next bus to save 1.75 million – which they can use in such cosmetic.
Just about every weekend during the summer leaving Belarusians to the cabin – dacha – where they work in the garden from morning to night, unless they are out in the woods and pick mushrooms or fish. Fruits, berries, vegetables (especially potatoes in unimaginable quantities) and mushrooms harvested and conserved. Chickens and hens cut your head off and end up in the freezer along with self-caught fish. Anything to stay alive through the winter – so the little they get the money can be used to that count. Status symbols, facade. The smartphone and the precious bag.
A new Iphone 6 cost the way 7500 kroner in Belarus by today. It’s like we do with our wages should paid 75,000 kroner for the phone. It is well precisely why it is infinitely fun to have such in Belarus.
Can poorer advice do status symbols important?
If Norwegians expensive handbags, watches and clothes really is so significant status symbols for us as scientists here at home think, it is thus not given the luxury shops goes bad times ahead if the economy gets tighter.
As a seller in the luxury business in Norway said a little bemused to DN Saturday:
– People are spending money in the same way as before, so we do not notice any bad times – if they really are so bad, then.
There are industries that are growing not In spite of , but because people get poorer advice. Rema 1000 and Toyota earn on hard times because people leave Menu and Mercedes, but still want to have both food and car.
Who knows, maybe also increases the turnover of luxury shops on the Norwegian economy goes on a bang. Because it suddenly becomes even more important to show that even if second have got poorer advice, it is not I among them.
It is only to begin the cultivation of vegetables in the cabin.
Also read on DN.no:
Norway no longer Sweden’s largest trading partner
Prevent Spain -Housing becomes a “genetic bomb”
Now it Trondheim overflowing rental housing
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