‘What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest,” Andy Warhol wrote in 1975. “You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke [and] you can drink Coke, too … The idea of America is so wonderful because the more equal something is, the more American it is.”
Fifty years later, it’s still true that the Diet Coke Donald Trump is chugging by the caseload in the Oval Office is exactly the same stuff his public can buy in a local shop. But the idea that mass consumerism is characterised by equality is about as dead as Warhol is. There are precious few products or experiences that haven’t been segmented into multiple tiers, from “embarrassing pauper” to “ultra-VIP”, in order to extract as much money from the consumer as possible.
Airlines are the most obvious example of this, of course. What used to be a standard experience (a free checked bag and snacks) are often now add-ons. And the airline model is steadily infiltrating other spaces, even the cinema. Paying for better seats is already common in the UK, in chains such as Odeon and Vue, but now it’s rolling out across the US. Earlier this year Adam Aron, the CEO of the cinema chain AMC, said on an earnings call that paying members of its VIP loyalty programmes will soon get priority access to seats with the best “sightline”. Which, honestly, seems a shortsighted strategy considering cinema attendance is dropping. But I don’t get paid $11m to $25m a year, depending on how shares are doing, like Aron does, so what do I know, eh?