Buying for want

Sometimes we see a story and only find one nugget out of paragraph on top of paragraph of stuff we've read over and over for weeks. Take this piece from The Christian Science Monitor on the Detroit Auto Show. Yadda yadda concept, yadda yadda halo, etc. But then at the end there are some really interesting statistics. In 1980, 80 percent of car buyers purchased a new vehicle out of need. By 1990 that number was cut to 60 percent and now only 18 percent of buyers shell out for a new car because they have to. Those numbers are just unreal and should make the car companies rethink what they're doing as far as building appliances. Sure 15 years ago maybe only Hondas and Toyotas lasted 10 years with little problems but today more and more brands are building solid cars. That means folks are buying to make a statement and not just for pedestrian reasons. This is huge and it's interesting we haven't seen these statistics before.