Richard's blog

We were talking about Costco in my brand management class so I had to go and check it out for myself. Thanks to my friend JB and his wife E for showing me around the joint.

It is another world that exists according to another logic entirely.

In my world, I look to buy the smallest size of anything in groceries because I live alone and don’t use a lot of stuff. In the Costco World, sugar comes in 25kg bags.

In my world, $5699 Cartier watches are found in a luxurious branded environment where the retail experience is at least part of the brand associations. In the Costco world a $5699 watch is mere paces from the twelve pack socks.

In my world, you buy a Royal Doulton figurine, a treadmill, 10kgs of dogfood, artisan bread, a pair of jeans and a $150,000 emerald ring at different stores. In the Costco world there is no reason to leave the building.

In my world, you pay for things when you shop. In the Costco world you pay to shop: an annual membership fee. There is a fair bit of membership card flashing (to get in, at the register, at the entrance to the booze section, etc.)

From a cultural level, consumption at this level of conspicuousness is quite confronting. Supermarkets by comparison seem tame. The amount of product in a supermarket seems somehow manageable or imaginable. The sheer quantity of product at Costco is a monument to the project of consumption in our society and the sheer logistics of catering to the consumption habits we have. Of course, Costco deliberately sets out to generate patterns of consumption (there is nothing like buying in bulk to get you to consume in bulk). At times I felt a sense of revulsion and at others a profound sense of wellbeing. Costco may not be pleasurable, but it is certainly arousing and invokes feelings of human dominance.

All my photos here.