What factors determine how well consumers with minority tastes and preferences are served by markets? By minority tastes, I mean a relatively small number of consumers whose preferences can only be met with special or customized products. Specially adapted automobiles for handicapped drivers, for example.
In some cases, as with autos, the manufacturer starts with a standard product and adjusts it to accommodate a particular need. The amount of customizing that takes place, and the price of customization, depends on whether consumers are willing and able to pay the market price to obtain special features, vs. using alternatives like taxis or other transportation services. Consumers that are willing and able to pay can typically find a supplier willing and able to produce to their highly particular needs.
Another example of the custom market exists in the eyeglass trade. Virtually all eyeglass lenses are custom finished, if not entirely custom made. But the greater ease and lower cost of adjusting lenses means they are routine business for most optical labs. Unlike custom autos, you can get custom made eyeglasses virtually anywhere. And while exotic lenses and prescriptions can get pricey, labs don’t have to worry too much about the cost of stocking these. Like autos, they are inventoried in a standard format—as ‘blanks,’—custom configured for the buyer strictly on demand.
The examples above make sense in the markets for highly specific goods with small clientele numbers. Producers reduce costs, as well as their financial risk, by holding very small or negligible inventories of infrequently-demanded items. If that means that there is some extra wait time or expense for the consumer, it also reflects rational cost management practice. Exactly the same practices pass without question for one-of-a-kind couturier or jewelry creations as for custom autos or lenses, and for basically the same reason.
Which brings us to the left-handed segment of the consumer market. That would be my segment. Left-handers are a minority among consumers. They make up between 10 and 15 percent of the world’s population—depending on how you count them. Any way that you measure, if at least 85 percent of the world’s population are not left-handed, the majority of mass-marketed products will be designed for the right-handed consumer. Some lefties think this is a problem. It’s not, at least not in the market, for a variety of reasons.
One reason lefties get by pretty well in a right-handed world is the fact that writing left-handed doesn’t necessarily mean the individual cannot do anything right-handed. Handedness is just one aspect of a person’s overall lateral preferences, it turns out. Some ‘left-handers’ lead with their right foot in walking, favor the right ear for listening, or the right eye for focus. Many left-handed individuals, therefore, function just fine with right-handed can openers, cell phones configured for right-handers, and a host of other items that include coffee mugs, measuring cups, scissors, wristwatches, PDA’s, knives, power tools, sporting equipment, school desks, notebooks, vegetable peelers, and even rulers and fountain pens. Though readily available for right-handers, these are less readily available for lefties. Clearly, many lefties have adapted where possible (though I cannot use a right-handed knife, for anything).
But of course, righties are not the Borg, and lefties don’t have to be assimilated. Some manufacturers offer a left-handed or a ‘neutral’ version of their product. Further, markets do not evidently discriminate against left-handers, just because left-handed items are not as commonly available. Producers are responding to lower levels of demand for left- vs. right-handed goods overall. They are attempting to use their scarce resources in ways that generate the best return, and inventories of unsold but highly specialized goods don’t meet that objective.
The factors that determine how well markets serve a minority of consumer tastes depend in large degree on how willing those consumers are to purchase the specialty goods. By no means should we expect that 15 percent of the products listed above should be manufactured to l-h specs. They simply wouldn’t be purchased—by left-handers—in quantities great enough to warrant such investment. My own example: I own at least three wristwatches, all r-h models. The extra convenience of a correctly configured l-h watch, with the stem on the left side of the face, is not worth it to me, either in search costs or added expense. Yet I know I can buy one, if I wish. I simply don’t wish.
Though the Latin for left is ‘sinister,’ there is little to support the idea that left-handers are an oppressed market minority. If they truly were, some clever entrepreneur could exploit that untapped demand and do the responsible thing—profiteer for the good of themselves and for the good of left-handers everywhere.