You can never say if something is a bubble until after it pops.
On the other hand, I think there's a convincing argument that people are having more and more of their needs and basic wants met. And if you're in the business of selling things - you need to synthesize wants in your customers.
Only 200 years ago, basically everyone on the planet was a peasant. Only 70 years ago, even middle class people in the US and Europe had a laughably low standard of living by today's measures.
Now, in ~60% of the world (the developed world incl. China) - only a couple percent of the population is a dirt poor.
In many ways, it takes more effort to sell people a seventh computer than their first. In other ways, repeat customers are your easiest sales. Still, you usually need to market even to your repeats...
Still, in order to grow - you can't just sell your existing customers the same thing every year. You need to constantly sell them more...
Agreed. Rather than "grow" I'd prefer to look at organizational success through time in terms of evolution.
That being said, there are tons of companies out there that are huge and do no advertising. Word of mouth, relevance to reality, and quality of product win out over the long term.
You can never say if something is a bubble until after it pops.
On the other hand, I think there's a convincing argument that people are having more and more of their needs and basic wants met. And if you're in the business of selling things - you need to synthesize wants in your customers.
Only 200 years ago, basically everyone on the planet was a peasant. Only 70 years ago, even middle class people in the US and Europe had a laughably low standard of living by today's measures.
Now, in ~60% of the world (the developed world incl. China) - only a couple percent of the population is a dirt poor.
In many ways, it takes more effort to sell people a seventh computer than their first. In other ways, repeat customers are your easiest sales. Still, you usually need to market even to your repeats...
Still, in order to grow - you can't just sell your existing customers the same thing every year. You need to constantly sell them more...