We are in an age of unprecedented business sophistication and innovation. U.S. markets are so sophisticated that consumers can choose not only from an array of finished products and services, but may also choose to customize, personalize, or otherwise manufacture the thing themselves.

It’s simply too much choice.

Meanwhile, the consuming public is growing ever more suspicious of companies and products. Lead-laced children’s toys, toxic pet food, corrupt executives, and reckless business decisions further aroused consumer suspicions in 2007. If companies cannot prove themselves to be responsible and careful, then consumers must accept the responsibility themselves.

FITCH sums up the recent shift from carefree to careful consumer decision making in a concept called Pure. Pure asserts that every new consumer experience – product, service, or otherwise – must be purer than its predecessor or its existing competition. The Pure experience is one that is either stripped of all artifice, or so packed with purpose that the end value transcends the product itself.

Pure ideas are built on a foundation of familiar principles, are nontoxic, have a clarity of purpose, and even expose the supply chain to a level of transparency never before expected or achieved before today.

The sudden and rapid acceptance of ideals such as the long-pushed environmental consciousness is an example of Pure in action. From one perspective, searches for “green” products greatly narrow the options at shelf. From the other perspective, consumption of “green” products yields a benefit that outlasts the use cycle via reducing carbon footprint, conserving natural resources, or limiting waste.