Friday, November 28, 2008

Body Business

In this world, there is nothing more precious than our body and health.

If one’s health is to falter, the cost for remedial surgeries and treatments is substantial and this will eat into our savings fast and furious.

Prevention is always better than remedial, thus keeping fit is the way to go for better living and health!

Apart from cost of the remedial treatments for our respective organ and body parts when we fall ill, I have suddenly an epiphany: our body is worth millions of dollars! Each part of our body has a market value, is hotly sought after by businesses! Don’t believe me? please read on for the markets and businesses for each of our organs or body parts:

Hair: hair cuts, salons, hair treatment centres for balding and hair related problems, hair
transplants and artificial hair.

Eyes: spectacles, a myriad kind of eye lens and lashes and contact lens, eye brow trimming

Face: too many to list here: whitening, Botox, laser, thinning, plastic surgeries, etc

Body: slimming, weight gaining, whitening, massage, etc (same as for face, too many businesses to list here)… tattooing and then laser therapy to remove it

Ears: candle waxing

Head: scalp massage

Bones: bone surgeries to increase one’s height

Skin Hair: laser removal, growing of more hair, etc

Tongue: tongue forking, etc (disgusting that people wants to spend money to that extent: to carve some peculiar shapes out of their tongues!)

Foot: foot reflexology

Hand: hand reflexology

Brain: education and skills upgrading

Heart: dating, matchmaking

Sexual organs: sex shops, sex enhancement clinics, brothels, Viagra, condoms, … (sex sells, again an almost inexhaustible list here)

Nose: aromatherapy, scented oils, plastic surgeries to make nose sharper,etc.

Mouth: the segment I believe to draw the greatest business: posh restaurants, fine dining apart from fulfilling the basic necessity to eat

Sad to say, even if we are dead, there are still business for harnessing: coffins, wreaths, funeral rites and necessities … and I also read that there is also a business to send coffins to the space for burial (space burial) for those who are wealthy enough to afford this hefty bill.

But I believe the greatest business that could be exploited from us is our state of mind. If we practice tolerance and not crave in to the lure of commercials to part with our hard-earned money for those luxurious products, there is no business to be done! Most of the foregoing ‘body businesses’ are to satisfy human’s insatiable wants, if one is not disciplined enough… but most of the well-heeled have already integrated these wants (to average folks like me) into their basic needs, aligned to their lifestyles. Some average folks who give in to their wants might be ‘burnt’ not knowing the product well enough before purchase and how much they can go…. just think of huge chunks of losses chalked up by average folks in the Lehman Brothers products.

Conclusion: its not our body that sells, its our mindset that can be exploited by marketers.

No comments :

Total Pageviews