Do Cheap, Mediocre Products Drive out Good Products?

[Renob]

@Der Trihs

No, all it means is that low priced, low quality goods make the manufacturers more money, not that people prefer them. The manufacturers aren’t motivated by altruism.

You really don’t understand how business works, do you? Of course manufacturers aren’t motivated by altruism (neither are customers, by the way). But to sell a product they must provide something that people want. So while they are motivated by self-interest, it is in their self-interest to meet the needs and desires of others. You don’t make money by making things that people hate.

Sometime yes, sometimes no. If the manufacturers collectively decide that it isn’t profitable to make a product, then no market exists. The same goes for low price, high quality products, for that matter.

If something is not profitable to make, then by definition the people demanding it are not willing to pay enough to obtain the product they ostensibly desire.

@ralph124c

Likewisw with the "B’ movies-they can be sold and distributed much cheaper than an art house movie.

But the movies that are hits overseas are the big-budget Hollywood action blockbusters. They are much, much more expensive to make than art house movies. Art movies are generally inexpensive to make because they have few special effects and few stars. They are cheap and high-quality and yet they only have a niche audience. Your assumptions about the movie market (just like your assumptions about the wider market) are flawed.

[Gary_Robson]

@RickJay

This is too specific to be on topic, but you can get better stepladders at industrial supply stores, and you’ll often pay less, strange as that might sound.

There isn’t an industrial supply store within 60 miles of here. Maybe farther, I don’t know. By the time I pay shipping or drive to one, I doubt it would be cheaper. I do acknowledge your point as it pertains to urban-dwellers, though.

As to the safety/home issue, this was for my bookstore. I bought the highest-capacity unit because I lift heavy boxes of used books onto high shelves with it.

@msmith537

They are also cheap as hell and they rarely break.

Cheap (in both senses of the word)? Yes! Rarely break? Tell that to the piles and piles of keyboards, mice, telephones, VCRs, cassette players, game controllers, and so on that I’ve had to throw away in the last couple of decades. The Guitar Hero failed within two weeks of purchasing it. The power supply on my Mac notebook lasted 13 months. The CD burner in my Dell computer lasted 6 months. I’ve gone through three DVRs in four years.

Nope. I won’t buy in to today’s cheap consumer electronics being reliable.

[ArizonaTeach]

@JThunder

Isn’t that what they call a Big Mac in France?

That would be a Royale with Fromage.

[Mangetout]

@Sam Stone

The short answer is no. In a properly functioning market, if it is dominated by low-priced, low quality goods, all that means is that the majority of the buyers prefer trading off quality for low prices. But a market still exists for the high priced stuff as well, and it’s available in direct proportion to how many people want to buy it. Wal-Mart may own a big chunk of the market, but Holt Renfrew and Abercrombie and Fitch still find their niche.

I’m probably making a big mistake trying to question this again, but in the above scenario, isn’t it possible that the reduced demand for the quality item drives up the unit cost of production, with the result that part of the remaining market can no longer afford it (even though they do actually want it) - and this further reduction in (practical) demand results in higher production unit costs, and so on, until it is no longer viable to continue producing the quality item, even though nobody actually wanted it gone?

[Renob]

@Mangetout

I’m probably making a big mistake trying to question this again, but in the above scenario, isn’t it possible that the reduced demand for the quality item drives up the unit cost of production, with the result that part of the remaining market can no longer afford it (even though they do actually want it) - and this further reduction in (practical) demand results in higher production unit costs, and so on, until it is no longer viable to continue producing the quality item, even though nobody actually wanted it gone?

In this scenario, people were not willing to pay enough to keep it, so how badly could they have really wanted it?

[Mangetout]

@Renob

In this scenario, people were not willing to pay enough to keep it, so how badly could they have really wanted it?

Dunno, but I find that a bit of a shallow argument. Why are people always so reluctant to just say (something like) it’s an unfortunate effect of the dynamics of the market?

[Lemur866]

@Mangetout

Dunno, but I find that a bit of a shallow argument. Why are people always so reluctant to just say (something like) it’s an unfortunate effect of the dynamics of the market?

It’s an unfortunate effect of the dynamics of the market.

Yes, there are such effects. The laws of supply and demand don’t always operate in a linear way. Mass produced items are often cheaper, which leads to increased demand, which means producers increase supply and marginal costs decrease even more. This happens in reverse for other products, where increased price leads to decreased demand, which means fewer suppliers, which means higher prices.

Eventually an equilibrium price is reached, but it’s not always simple.

Or take the example of that handmade furniture. Back in the “old days”, that handmade furniture was made by struggling apprentices. Labor was cheap, even skilled labor. Nowadays who would go into cabinetmaking if they got paid minimum wage? So skilled craftsmen command premium prices, and that means a small market, which means even higher prices. So yeah, in the old days you could buy handmade furniture for less money…but the wages paid to the craftsmen were much much lower.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that we routinely enjoy incredibly cheap incredibly high quality products that were affordable only to the tiniest elite back in the old days, or not available at all. It’s not all cheap crap vs expensive good stuff. There’s plenty of expensive crap and plenty of cheap good stuff.

Aaand here it is:

Common everday items you can't believe are so cheap

[Mangetout]

@Lemur866

It’s an unfortunate effect of the dynamics of the market.

Yes, there are such effects. The laws of supply and demand don’t always operate in a linear way. Mass produced items are often cheaper, which leads to increased demand, which means producers increase supply and marginal costs decrease even more. This happens in reverse for other products, where increased price leads to decreased demand, which means fewer suppliers, which means higher prices.

That’s what I was trying to say, only more elegantly expressed. Thanks.

[Sam_Stone]

You also have to consider that people today have a much greater selection of things to spend their money on, and therefore want to spend proportionally less on any one thing.

For example, 50 years ago it was common for middle class people to have a really nice china set. Probably nicer than people on average have today. But that china set represented a significant investment of their total spending power. The phrase ‘prized possession’ was used a lot back then. Likewise, men often spent significant money for a good watch, but it was one of the only luxury items they’d own.

Today, you want the china set, but you also want a new TV, an iPod, a computer, two cars, all sorts of recreational equipment, VCRs, DVD players, ad infinitem. You spend money for cable TV, internet connections, cell phones, etc.

Also, back then a lot of people bought quality because the alternative to quality was absolute junk. You either got excellent hand-crafted furniture, or you had to buy cheap crap from early mass-production factories or make things yourself.

Today, you can still buy the expensive hand crafted stuff, but the mass-produced stuff is much better than it used to be, which drives down demand for the really expensive things. It’s not that the quality of good things has gotten worse, but that the quality of crappy things has gotten much better. Take that china set - if you weren’t using that, what were you likely to have? We had some godawful blue plastic dishes. Glass dishes broke easily and had simple patterns or none at all. It was clearly cheap stuff.

Today, you can buy excellent glazed dinnerware sets with nice colors and patterns for under $100. So the need for expensive china dwindles.

Add in the increased cost of labor, which pushes more and more goods into mass production. I saw an episode of “This Old House” where they were repairing some handmade balustrades on the stairwell of what would have been a lower-middle class house ca 1940. They made the point getting an estimate for a craftsman to hand-make an equivalent railing today, and the bill was $16,000. Not many middle class homes can afford a $16,000 railing for their stairs. So we get mass-produced spindles. Less choice, less customization, but FAR more efficient.

But when you compare apples to apples, say the quality of electronics today compared to 30 years ago, there’s simply no question that the new stuff is much, much better. When I was a kid we had an old RCA Victor Black and White TV, and it broke down regularly. In fact, TV’s broke down so much back in the day that ‘TV Repairman’ was a growth industry, and these guys drove around making house calls to fix TVs. It was a semi-regular thing to have the TV repairman show up. Or the appliance repairman, or the plumber, or any number of specialists who drove around keeping things working.

Poor people today have access to higher quality goods than they’ve ever had in history.

[MichaelQReilly]

@msmith537

Your barber chair not withstanding, I think you would have a hard time finding a mass produced product from 1947 that is superior to it’s 2007 equivalent.

We may have to agree to disagree here. It is true that some mass produced/everyman products like cars are far superior today than in the past, but there are many that aren’t. I don’t want to start listing off products, but there are tons of examples like furniture, tools, staplers, etc., etc…

[Telemark]

@MichaelQReilly

I don’t want to start listing off products, but there are tons of examples like furniture, tools, staplers, etc., etc…

The point is that we only have examples of the really good stuff that lasted. The tools, furniture, staplers that were made very poorly haven’t made it down to us today. There certainly were quality goods made years ago, but there was lots and lots of crap.

Alternatively, most folks simply did without the tools, furniture, and staplers because they couldn’t afford them.

[RickJay]

@InvisibleWombat

There isn’t an industrial supply store within 60 miles of here.

Regrettably, a lot of things won’t be available to you if you live in the boondocks. Such is the tradeoff, always has been, and always will be.

Cheap (in both senses of the word)? Yes! Rarely break? Tell that to the piles and piles of keyboards, mice, telephones, VCRs, cassette players, game controllers, and so on that I’ve had to throw away in the last couple of decades.

So was stuff 50 years ago better? As has already pointed out, for the most part machines broke down MORE often, if anything. I still remember old TVs; they were ridiculously unreliable as compared to today’s. Since I started buying my own TVs, I have never had one break. Not a single television I’ve owned in 15 years has broken in any way, even the cheap off brand one in my basement. Back in the 70’s, my Dad called the TV repairman more than a few times.

For every anecdotal example you provide of something you claim isn’t made as well as it used to be I can provide two examples of things that are better. Cars - the largest purchase most Westerners will ever make that they don’t live in - are so much better than they used to be it’s almost absurd to make the comparison. Think about that; the single most important consumer product most people will ever buy is vastly better than it used to be. The cars they made 30, 40 years ago were, by today’s standards, garbage.

How about baby products? My parents are routinely amazed at the astounding quality of baby products we have for our daughter, and the selection’s 20 times better than it was when I was a baby. We don’t buy designer stuff, either - just standard issue kid’s stuff. It’s vastly, vastly superior to what it once was.

Choices and quality of food in supermarkets are better than they used to be, at least according to my parents, and it’s certainly my general impression; the grocery stores are offering far more than they used to.

Sports equipment is, in any sport I’m personally familiar with, better.

Heck, even HOUSES. I remember the house I grew up in, a three bedroom split level, was a complete peice of shit by today’s standards. It would not have met any municipal code in this province today; the basement leaked, the windows were about as insulating as a sheet of wax paper, the floors were shoddy, and this was a nice home by the standards of its day in a nice suburb. If you listed the ways that a house built in 2007 is better than a house built in 1967 I’m not sure you could fit it into one post; think of the improvements they’ve made in the safety of wiring and electrical service, fire safety, insulation, so on and so forth. Any house build new today, at an inflation-equivalent price level, will be a better house than one built in, say, 1967 or 1977.

Do you really wanna trade anecdotes?

[Gorsnak]

@MichaelQReilly

We may have to agree to disagree here. It is true that some mass produced/everyman products like cars are far superior today than in the past, but there are many that aren’t. I don’t want to start listing off products, but there are tons of examples like furniture, tools, staplers, etc., etc…

If you think the tools of yesteryear can stack up against the likes of modern SnapOn, Klein, and the like, you’re living in a dreamworld.

[athelas]

@Der Trihs

Exactly. And if they decide to not pursue certain markets, there won’t be one. If it isn’t profitable, or perceived as such, there won’t be a market, no matter how high the demand is.

That usage demonstrates a basic ignorance of the concept of demand. The demand for a product is defined by how much people will pay for it, and therefore determines (along with production costs) the profit that the company makes. Saying that a product would be unprofitable even “no matter how high the demand is” is nonsense.

[msmith537]

@InvisibleWombat

Cheap (in both senses of the word)? Yes! Rarely break? Tell that to the piles and piles of keyboards, mice, telephones, VCRs, cassette players, game controllers, and so on that I’ve had to throw away in the last couple of decades. The Guitar Hero failed within two weeks of purchasing it. The power supply on my Mac notebook lasted 13 months. The CD burner in my Dell computer lasted 6 months. I’ve gone through three DVRs in four years.

Nope. I won’t buy in to today’s cheap consumer electronics being reliable.

Compared to what though? Vacuum tube components from the 50s? Is there a difference in the reliability of a mouse or keyboard from 2008 and 1980?

[Justin_Bailey]

@InvisibleWombat

Cheap (in both senses of the word)? Yes! Rarely break? Tell that to the piles and piles of keyboards, mice, telephones, VCRs, cassette players, game controllers, and so on that I’ve had to throw away in the last couple of decades. The Guitar Hero failed within two weeks of purchasing it. The power supply on my Mac notebook lasted 13 months. The CD burner in my Dell computer lasted 6 months. I’ve gone through three DVRs in four years.

But these are just your experiences. Other people will come up with others, such as…

I’ve been playing video games for over 20 years and the only controllers I’ve broken are the ones I threw at the wall (Contra was a bitch man). Likewise with CD players, I’ve owned a few, the only one that “broke” was the one I dropped. My Compaq PC (with Windows ME no less) has worked without fail since I bought it almost 8 years ago. The only reason I had to replace the mouse is because I’m an Internet addict and I clicked the left button into oblivion.

My VCR is over 10 years old, my DVD player just turned 6. Both of them work fine and the only reason I want to replace them is because they were both bargain basement buys and I want features that have been developed since then.

The only thing I’ve had that just stopped working was my old TV, which died last year just shy of it’s ninth birthday. But I also left it on roughly 14 hours a day (I frequently fell asleep in front of it and wouldn’t shut it off until the next morning), so I’m sure that had something to do with it.

Which one of us is right? Both? Neither? Some middle ground?

[Anne_Neville]

@Mangetout

in the above scenario, isn’t it possible that the reduced demand for the quality item drives up the unit cost of production, with the result that part of the remaining market can no longer afford it (even though they do actually want it) - and this further reduction in (practical) demand results in higher production unit costs, and so on, until it is no longer viable to continue producing the quality item, even though nobody actually wanted it gone?

Thing is, the market is not good at keeping things around that everybody wants but nobody wants to pay for.

An example: a lot of people like to shop for a big-ticket item (say, a big flat-screen TV) at stores with knowledgeable salespeople. But then when it comes time to actually buy the TV, they go to Wal-Mart so they save a few bucks on the price. They want the place with the good salespeople to stay around, but that can’t happen if a lot of people are buying items from a cheaper place instead.

[elmwood]

I found that the “older is better!”" mentality is really dominant in the Rust Belt region. I almost never had such debates when I lived elsewhere, but here in Cleveland, and back in my hometown in Buffalo, there seems to be a near-universal belief that older … well, older everything is built more solidly, and is more durable and reliable, than the products of today.

“Get an older car! There’s fewer things like computers or power windows to go wrong. They built them to last! You could run a Dodge slant-six for months on no oil, and it would just keep on going! They don’t crumple up in accidents like today’s tin foil deathtraps!”

“Old houses are built so much better than newer houses! They were usually built by immigrant craftsmen from Germany and Italy, and they used real two-by-fours. because they didn’t have building codes in the day, they were overengineered. They’ll still be standing long after today’s McMansions are dilapidated wrecks.”

Could the legacy of the former dominance of manufacturing in the region have contributed to the “older is better!” mindset in the Rust Belt?

[Justin_Bailey]

@Anne Neville

An example: a lot of people like to shop for a big-ticket item (say, a big flat-screen TV) at stores with knowledgeable salespeople. But then when it comes time to actually buy the TV, they go to Wal-Mart so they save a few bucks on the price. They want the place with the good salespeople to stay around, but that can’t happen if a lot of people are buying items from a cheaper place instead.

I know the “people don’t want good service, they go to Wal-Mart for a cheap price!” meme is alive and well on the Internet, but it’s just not true in this case.

Wal-Mart barely carries any big flat-screen TVs and the ones they do carry are not the brands people look for at the knowledgeable places.

Walmart.com

[Anne_Neville]

@Justin_Bailey

Wal-Mart barely carries any big flat-screen TVs and the ones they do carry are not the brands people look for at the knowledgeable places.

Walmart.com

OK, maybe not big flat-screen TVs. I just used that as an example (I’ve never shopped for one- a little TV is enough for me).