{"id":39597,"date":"2011-09-19T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T15:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=39597"},"modified":"2011-11-09T00:58:14","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T05:58:14","slug":"corporations-adjusting-to-a-shrinking-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/09\/19\/corporations-adjusting-to-a-shrinking-middle-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporations Adjusting to a Shrinking Middle Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In a previous post<\/a> I discussed data showing the growing income inequality in the U.S.: the middle class is shrinking, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer. It turns out that corporations understand what is happening\u00a0and they are responding.\u00a0 In brief, they are letting go of the middle class as a market and restructuring their offerings to appeal to the top and bottom of the income distribution.<\/p>\n

Below the jump (warning, it automatically starts playing with sound) is an enlightening\u00a0five minute discussion of this new business strategy on Daily Ticker\u00a0video<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The Wall Street Journal,\u00a0highlighting Procter & Gamble, also\u00a0reports<\/a> on this\u00a0development:<\/p>\n

For the first time in 38 years… the company launched a new dish soap in the U.S. at a bargain price.<\/p>\n

P&G\u2019s roll out of Gain dish soap says a lot about the health of the American middle class: The world\u2019s largest maker of consumer products is now betting that the squeeze on middle America will be long lasting…<\/p>\n

P&G isn\u2019t the only company adjusting its business.\u00a0 A wide swath of American companies is convinced that the consumer market is bifurcating into high and low ends and eroding in the middle.\u00a0 They have begun to alter the way they research, develop and market their products…<\/p>\n

To monitor the evolving American consumer market, P&G executives study the Gini index, a widely accepted measure of income inequality that ranges from zero, when everyone earns the same amount, to one, when all income goes to only one person. In 2009, the most recent calculation available, the Gini coefficient totaled 0.468, a 20% rise in income disparity over the past 40 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have a Gini index similar to the Philippines and Mexico\u2014you\u2019d never have imagined that,\u201d says Phyllis Jackson, P&G\u2019s vice president of consumer market knowledge for North America. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve typically thought about America as a country with big income gaps to this extent.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such a response may well strengthen corporate bottom lines, at least for a while.\u00a0 Unfortunately for the great majority of us, it may also reinforce existing\u00a0downward trends in income.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a previous post I discussed data showing the growing income inequality in the U.S.: the middle class is shrinking, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer. It turns out that corporations understand what is happening\u00a0and they are responding.\u00a0 In brief, they are letting go of the middle class as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,23703],"class_list":["post-39597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39597"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41650,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39597\/revisions\/41650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}