Changing Society Briefing 7: The rise of consumer choice and its implications for charities

Introduction

This is the seventh in the Heyheyjoe briefing series, looking at external social, economic, and demographic changes and their impact on charities and non-profit organisations. This one focuses on the rise of consumer choice and its implications for charities.

Some ways in which we have more choice in our lives

1. Rise in the number of supermarket products

The average supermarket in 1975 carried approximately 9000 products (references available on request). By 2008, that number had swelled to nearly 50,000, driven by the rise in out-of-town locations. More recently, the growth of choice has been in locations with the corner-shop of old replaced by a Tesco Metro and the high-volume, low-cost approach of retailers like Aldi or Lidl.

2. Choice of drinks at Starbucks or Costa

I used to have a photo of a sign from Starbucks boasting 87,000 choices of drinks. With the rise of Matacha and other drinks, that level of choice is rumoured to run into millions. If each person had a different drink every day of their lives from Starbucks, it would take several lifetimes to ever need to have the same drink twice.

3. Social media and making the world our own

There are millions of choices of people and accounts to follow on social media. This means our sources of information are different for every single person, because who they follow is different, and what the algorithms suggest will vary from person to person. Equally important, the numbers that people follow vary from person to person. No two people’s social media accounts' content are the same.

4. Airline tickets and holiday destinations

The number of holiday destinations has increased greatly since the 1990s, as has the frequency with which people go overseas, and the length of the stays. This means that while the number of traditional package holidays has increased from 13 million in 1994 to 25 million just before Covid, the journeys to more exotic destinations have skyrocketed. For example, there were under 20,000 UK visitors to Mexico in 1994, and by 2018, there were nearly 700,000.

5. Clothes and the returns culture

The rise in clothing choices is driven by increased demand for personalised, sustainable, and expressive styles, fuelled by social media trends and a shift in consumer values towards quality over quantity (so says my AI feed). The reality is that low-cost manufacturing in countries like China, Bangladesh and Vietnam, as well as quick delivery times, and shortened manufacturing cycles have allowed clothes to become much more ‘disposable’ and ‘returnable’.

6. TV channels and streaming services

Technology and the explosion in choice go hand in hand. The rise in cable TV and now internet-based streaming services has produced a huge increase in choice in channels and programmes. At one level, dedicated sports channels have produced a host of expensive services for lovers of single or multiple sports. Similarly, Netflix, Disney+ and Prime have produced not only a rash of new movies, but also new TV series, and reruns of old TV as well.

7. Fragmentation of news sources and the rise of influencers

Watching the ten o’clock news used to be a household ritual (and still is for my 97-year-old dad). Now, for many, news is consumed not in 30-minute programmes, but in 5-second TikTok clips, or 20-word headlines. This means many people get their information about the world intertwined with their updates on celebrity lives, the latest Mr Beast video or Khaby Lame clip, or posts from family or colleagues. News is no longer a separate category, but another post by influencers or celebrities or Russian bots.

8. Smartphones and instant personalisation

Irrespective of how people view content on social media via their phones, the phones themselves give people a huge choice. Of ringtone, of notifications, of wallpaper, of apps, of privacy, of location and more. People can use their phone to make an extension of their personality and the way they see the world.

The issues about the rise in choice

For younger people, they have always had a huge choice

For those under 35, huge amounts of choice have always been part of their lives. While choice have increased since their teenage years, it is part and parcel of the way their lives. As well as being digital natives, they are also choice natives – they handle it with ease.

While for older people, it is a massive change.

When I grew up, there were 3 TV channels, no TV in the mornings, and we watched TV when it was on. No social media, Vim seemed the only cleaning product, and mobile phones were a fantasy seen only on Star Trek. So, for my generation, a huge amount of choice is relatively new and needs to be adapted to.

CPA – continuous partial attention – allows us to cope with an always-on world. Look at yourself, or your family, next time you watch TV. Most people will be on their phones, checking social media, answering emails, responding to WhatsApp, all while having a conversation or cooking a meal. This is CPA – never wholly focusing on one thing. Picking up snippets of info to allow them to process the huge amount of info and choices coming at them.

Embedding habits and favourites bypasses the need to choose

We reduce our need to make choices by using the ‘favourites’ tab in ordering groceries, listening to our playlists, or allowing the algorithms on social media to make our choices for us. The net effect of this is that once the initial choices have been made, they rarely need to be revisited. The danger is that we become like the child who decides they only like baked beans, because they never try anything else.

Influencers, brands and the rise of irrational thinking

Another way in which we navigate the world of choice is to use brands to help make the choice. We watch movies or TV shows because we like the star or the previous series. We choose a coffee drink because it has a great ad or is recommended by an influencer. We go on holiday somewhere because we see the pictures on Instagram or our friends recommend it. None of these is new, but they become more important as we have more choices to navigate. Less and less do we make our choices based on a thorough, rigorous analysis of our choices. Our choices are often irrational and based on tiny amounts of time or information.

But choice lets people make the world their own.

The important thing is that choice lets people make the world their own. From our phones to our social media consumption, to our clothes and our leisure time, we create our own world where we see the world we want to see, and filter out what we don’t. We make the world our own.

The implications for charities

At the heart of my worry about the rise in choice is whether charities offer choice in a way that consumers recognise.

Do charity donors get offered choice?

Perhaps the most obvious place where people interact with charities is as donors. For the most part, donors are offered very little choice about how often they hear from charities. Its frequency I particularly worry about. I am only aware of a couple of charities who have offered donors a choice of how frequently they hear. Typically choice is in the hands of the charity, not the donor, except for a GDPR-conforming all-or-nothing option. When it comes to choice, few charities resemble the modern world that people are used to!

Will generational change in choice make charities seem antiquated?

Older people, those over 50, let’s say, are used to charities the way they are currently, with limited choice – a sort of ‘any colour you like as it's black’ approach. The challenge is whether younger generations will recognise and support that kind of charity approach. Or is the danger that millennials and Gen Z will find the ‘monthly direct debit’ approach increasingly antiquated in a digital world.

Are charity brands resembling anything that younger donors recognise?

Linked to general change and the rise in choice is the importance of brands. Brands help people choose and identify the world they like. Are any charity brands, either for people, products or organisations, working powerfully for the under-50s or under-40s? Today’s successful consumer brands are designed to cut through in a social media world full of choice. Are any charity brands achieving that?

Who are the charity sector’s influencers?

Influencers, brands and choice interact with each other in today’s world. Brands use celebrities to market their products, and indeed, celebrities now create successful consumer products worth billions (Rihanna and Kim Kardashian are but two examples). Which charity brands exploit influencers to make the most of the potential of a high-choice world?

Charities will need to use all their strategic and innovative brilliance to overcome the slow change in people’s lifestyles as choice rises, and consumer brands, products and services adapt to this changing world.

Joe Saxton

September 2025

This briefing is part of a series looking at the impact of social, economic, technological, and demographic changes on charities and non-profit organisations. We have already published a briefing on:

·      the ageing population (briefing no 1)

·      changing numbers of single people and fertility rates (no 2)

·      the impact of growing government debt (no 3).

·      Changes in the way we die and its implications. (no 4)

·      wealth, inequality and poverty in the UK (no 5)

·      changing patterns of religious observance (no 6)

In future issues, we will look at the impact of digital, the growing cult of the individual, and changing patterns of support for different causes. Go to www.heyheyjoe.info for more information.