I forget who makes the commercials, but there is a commercial for gas running around here that has people who work at the station saying things like
“People tell me that their cars run better with our gas”
“I’ve had customers say that their car will only run with our gas”
“Some people buy our gas because their car just doesn’t run right with anyone elses!”
BULLSHIT! THIS IS BULLSHIT!
If you believe that, you’re an utter fucking moron. SHEEP! You people are all just SHEEP! Ugh. I’m moving to an unincorporated, unclaimed island in the Pacific. People are just too stupid for me to deal with.
–Tim
We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.
In college we addressed this issue with graphs and calculus apparently came up with some prety sound reasoning - unfortunaltely I forgot the bulk of it somewhere in the hours immediately following the exam. For the sake of simplicity, draw line on a page, labelling left end A, the right B and the middle C. Figure the extent of this line to be the desirable market for gas consumers. Based upon consumer behaviour-driven selection processes - basic convenience, familiarity etc, station at A gets market share(as depicted by line space)up to C approaching from the left, and station at b gets market share up until C approaching from the right. At the same time assume both have access to consumers in the less desirable off-page spots. Assuming that the next gas station is an equal distance off-page, half the business of each is in prosperous terrritory, the other half, not so much. The bottom line is that they can both increase sales by approaching the middle. That way both sides are in the desirable marketplace and thay can focus on differentiating their services and pricing to potentially win ALL of the business in the more profitable digs, where before this was not a possibility. Hence, we see bronze, silvert and gold gas, coffee mugs, scratch and win etc. The best way to illustrate this is move A, holding B and C constant and consider what the result will be, vice versa ad nauseum. Ultimately, this game theory proves that the best spot for all is right alongside one another in world of near perfect competition - ie a book store is a book store, gas station is a gas station etc etc.
Hospitals are really guilty of this. Seems every city I live in they tend to be in one area. Chicago has two hospitals on the NW Side. The next closest are THREE all in Humboldt Park (one of the cities worst areas).
Then you got 3 major hospitals right west of the loop.
It would make sense to keep the ERs spaced but no. In FL it was the same way. Hospitals across the streets from each other.
Another good example of this “clustering” are the malls. In the mall by my town, there are about three differnt bookstores. Although they are not all in the same PART of the mall, they are all IN the mall. If I came in from one entance looking for a popular book, I would probably go to the closest bookstore. Even if another had the same book for cheeper (excuse the bird pun), I wouldn’t wander through the whole mall, or try to figure out the confusing mall map, going through all the bookstores just to save $3.
Then again, that’s just me. Maybe Arnold’s dad would.
“Whenever a man hears it
he is young, and Nature
is in her spring;
whenever he hears it, it
is a new world and a free
country, and the gates of
heaven are not shut
against him”
–Thoreau, on
the song of the wood thrush
