My Personal Study

There are many things that seem to divide Americans these days. One thing that we appear to have in common is the consumption of goods and services. In fact consumption may be the number one driver in determining the health of the United States economy. As we find ourselves in the Christmas season, most of the economic news is about what Americans are buying as an indicator of economic health. Consumption also has an economic downside. There are people who consume more goods and services than they can afford, and government sometimes consume more than it can afford as well. There are other consequences of consumption like pollution and perhaps climate change. It would also appear that given the importance of consumption in our society, people often give very little thought to how, what, and why they consume what they do, not to mention what the unintended consequences might be of this consumption. With that in mind this paper will focus on three areas; individual consumption, small business consumption, and the consumption of a larger organization. The methods that I have chosen are the following: on a personal level I've kept a log of my own consumption in the attempt to better understand and quantify my own behavior, as it relates to a small business I was able to receive some data from a person who runs their own small business, and as it relates to a large organization I was able to interview a Hospital Administrator that helped explain consumption criteria and priorities of a larger organization. My premise is this; although the scale is different, consumption is a common and predictable process whether it's an individual, small organization, or a large one and the implications of a society build on consumption are serious and worth examining.
One of the guidelines for this paper was to keep a consumption journal for one week. This really helped open my eyes to what my personal consumption habits are. Throughout the week I spent roughly $141. As I approached the analysis of my purchases, I divided things into general groups. The two most significant categories were food, and Christmas presents. It occurred to me that this week may not be typical, because I spend more money during the holiday season than other times. In any event, Christmas presents, food, and decorations have been putting a dent in my pocket book. It's clear that I am not alone, “For the first 36 days of the November- December holiday season, online holiday spending reached nearly $16 billion, comScore said, up 3 percent from a year ago. For the week ending December 6, comScore said online holiday spending rose 3 percent to $4.6 billion. Last week began with a bang, with online sales on Cyber Monday, which was November 30, rising 5 percent to $887 million”(Online holiday spending). Along with my spending habits, I also kept a journal on what I threw away. I believe this was the most startling piece of data I received. While jotting down the things I threw away, many of them were everyday items such as napkins, tissues, or wrappers. The real shocker was when I began to pay closer attention to the food I would throw away at every meal, especially when eating out when I could not choose my own portions. After doing some research, it seems that I am not the only one having this issue. According to MSNBC at least 14 percent of purchased food ends up in the garbage. Food waste reportedly makes up about 12 percent of landfill materials. Aside from the costly operating budgets of these facilities, the environment is paying the real price. Another product I was throwing away in large numbers was plastic bottles, and aluminum pop cans. Through out the week I had accumulated a collection of ten water bottles, and twelve pop cans. This may not seem like huge numbers, but on a monthly basis it comes out to be eighty eight bottles and cans. Take eighty eight times twelve months and you get 1,056. This number helps add to the increasing aluminum and plastic waste our dumps are receiving each year. “Bottled water is the single largest growth area among all beverages, that includes alcohol, juices and soft drinks. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over the last decade, from 10.5 gallons in 1993 to 22.6 in 2003, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation. The growth has been even more impressive in terms of water bottles sold: from 3.3 billion in 1997 to 15 billion in 2002” (Llanos, Miguel).

Looking at a slightly bigger picture of consumption, I did some research on a child care center in the basement of a church called Sunshine Tree. Just like individuals, businesses are consumers of products and services. Like many child care centers, Sunshine Tree is on the food program. Food represents a significant portion of the consumption for this business. In addition, they are mandated by the government to follow a specific food program. The food program “is a key source of support for serving nutritious meals and snacks in child care centers, family child care homes, Head Start, after-school programs, shelters and adult day care centers. The program provides reimbursement for food and meal preparation cost, ongoing training in the nutritional needs of children, and on site assistance in meeting the program's strong nutritional requirements” (FRAC). If food preparation, selection and amounts don't meet programs standards, the center will not be reimbursed for the food they offer. The food program has requirements for breakfast, lunch, and snack. At Sunshine Tree, they have to prepare food for fifty three children. For breakfast for one child that is between the ages of 1-2 they need a half a cup of milk, one fourth cup juice, fruit, or vegetable, and either one half slice of bread, one fourth cup cold dry cereal, or one fourth cup cooked cereal, rice, or macaroni product. Ages 3-5 and 6-12 only increase in the amount of food that is required to be offered. These requirements have two limitations. First, kids may not like the selections. Second, there is the potential for a good deal of waste. From my own personal experience working at a child care center, kids don't always eat all the food the guidelines require. In other cases they don't like the choices and simply refuse to eat it. So not only are these centers consuming large portions of food and drinks, but a lot of it is also going to waste.

To further explore this topic I interviewed the Hospital Administrator of the Albert Lea Medical Center, Steven Underdahl, to get a greater picture of the consumption of a larger organization. We all know that businesses are consumers of products and services. So the question is, what criteria and methods are used to make choices on what is to be consumed. Steve states that “in some ways it's very similar to how it works for individuals. An organization has things it needs, things it wants, and a budget that dictates what we can afford. Budgets are a good place to start. Our budget is a plan of how much we are going to spend. We budget in three general categories: capital (equipment, buildings, etc.), operations (day to day expenses), and people (salaries/benefits). Over sixty percent of our budget is for people.” I then asked him how he decided what the right amount on money is for their budget. Steve said that he uses two primary methods for this; one being past experience, looking back at how much they spent the year before, and two looking at current conditions such as if they have a new service, or if they are doing more of something. “Each year we have approximately 11 million dollars of capital request but have a budget of between 3.5 -5 million dollars. So we have to chose what things are more important than other things. Those things that help care for patients and/or support the business get a higher priority than other things. Just like individuals, there are many times that we just can not afford all the things we need.” Steve further explains that the poor economy has had an effect on the consumption of his medical center. “Starting about a year ago when the economy slowed down, we started to see people change their habits about health care. If people lost their job, they often lost their insurance. We postponed many big capital projects such as a new building that had been planned, due to this.” Keeping track of a big organizations consumption sounds like a difficult task, but Steve explains two ways of doing this by “doing monthly reports of everything that is purchased, and the usage of inventory controls” (Underdahl, Steven). It occurs to me that this method is very similar to the spending and consuming record I kept for myself. The goal is the same, if you understand what you buy and use, it's easier to control it and make better decisions.

As a result of this brief review my initial premise has changed a bit. There are indeed many similarities between individuals and organizations as it relates to consumption, but there are some key differences. The most obvious difference is that businesses seem to be somewhat more purposeful in how they purchase and consume things. They use more planning and strategy to determine what they consume and why. This seems to be mostly connected to running their operations in a financially responsible way. By contrast, my personal experience is that I spend much less time planning and considering what I was consuming and why. Clearly with a sample size this small I cannot make wide sweeping conclusions, but my level of consumption awareness was a good deal less detailed than either a small or large business. The other change from my original premise is the degree to which consumption is predictable. Again, I suspect businesses do a better job of predicting and budgeting their consumption than individuals do. At the very least, they do better than I do. Even though the businesses have better methods, they have elements they cannot control as well. Volumes of patients that come to the hospital, or changing food program requirements at the day care can make predicting consumption challenging. A similarity was that both my own experience, and that of the businesses did not indicate to much thought about the impact on the greater environment. We were all concerned about waste, but there does not seem to be as much attention to the impact of waste as there is the budgeting of purchasing. This was true for me on a personal level as well. I would check my bank account to make certain I could afford something but gave much less thought to the other consequences of my consumption. I would hope that as a result of this exercise I become a bit more aware and purposeful about my consuming habits, and those of our community and country.

Works Cited

Collins, Karen. "Are you gonna eat that? How to curb food waste." MSNBC.com. MSN, 11 July 2008. Web. 15 Dec. 2009.

“consumption.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. 2003. Houghton Mifflin Company 15 Dec.2009 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/consumption

"FRAC - Child And Adult Care Food Program." Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). Web. 15 Dec. 2009.

Llanos, Miguel. "Plastic bottles pile up as mountains of waste." MSNBC.com. MSN, 3 Mar. 2005. Web. 15 Dec. 2009.

"Online holiday spending rises 3 percent so far." MSNBC.com. 9 Dec. 2009. Web. 15 Dec. 2009.

Pedroncelli, Rich. AP file. Photograph. Http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5279230/. MSNBC, 3 Mar. 2005. Web. 15 Dec. 2009.

Underdahl, Steven L. Personal interview. 13 Dec. 2009.