Expensive wines and scotches (ok, maybe not all expensive wines and scotches, but a lot of them are crap).
Expensive cars.
But you know, nearly everyone with disposable income has at least one thing they spend money on that other people go, “huh?” It might be Magic: The Gathering cards. It might be dinner in fancy restaurants, it might be orchids. Expensive makeup. Hubcaps. AKC dogs (hey, a mutt from the pound is just as good!). And not everyone believes price point to be the deciding factor. If I have to drive halfway across town to get something for $10 cheaper, I’ve spent $6 in gas plus my time.
And not all companies follow the same business model - thank God! I can’t stand to shop in a Wal-Mart even if the prices are low. But some business models are more expensive. One model that’s really expensive is mall retail. By the time you pay the rent and other overhead, you need to charge a lot of cover your expenses. Mall retail is usually not a volume operation.
Its actually surprisingly hard to survive in the niche where rich and stupid intersect. There is a lot of competition. And while setting your prices too high may not be the thing that drives you out of business in that niche, picking the wrong color for this season’s purse might be the death of your business.
… Well, don’t keep us in suspense! Tell us more about your candelabra! Or is one a “candelabrum”?
You guys forgot another high-end store: Harry and David. True, it’s mail order that has a few brick-and-mortar locations, but I think it still counts as a place for people who have more money than sense. $25 for a box of pears? $20 for chocolate-covered popcorn??
Well, the crux of your argument is the “actually worth” line. I seem to recall that we’re supposed to let the market determine what stuff is actually worth. If those martini shakers are overpriced? Then they will sit on the shelf gathering dust until they’re put on sale for 80% off. Yeah, so you went somewhere else and saw “almost the same thing” for $8.00. Was it the same thing? Was one stainless and one mild steel? Maybe one was made in the U.S. and the other was made in some Third-world sweat shop? – a distinction that would matter to some buyers. Maybe it’s just greviously overpriced to gather in some profit from the well-heeled impulse buyer? If so, everyone benefits. The store gets some extra cash. The impulse buyer walks away feeling like they must have a quality product because it was expensive. And Ogre gets to walk away shaker-less but feeling smugly superior because he didn’t buy an overpriced trinket. Everyone wins!
I know it offends some people’s sense of what is fair and right, but there * are * people to whom cost really is not much of an object. Maybe they can’t lay out for a Ferrari, but if they see a $50.00 cocktail shaker that they want, it’s no big deal.
You know, I haven’t been in the B&W place in awhile. It’s one of those places that tends to have tons of cute stuff when I can’t afford to shop, and absolutely nothing when I’m lookin’ to drop a wad. Hmmm . . . could that be psychological, you think? But I digress.
I agree with you about WS. I think plenty can be said for giving people a clean place to look at pretty things (which may be why it’s hard for me to walk into Wal-Mart), and there are some reasonably priced things in there, and items that you sometimes can’t find anywhere else, at least for a period of time (our stemless wine glasses come to mind; now they’re everywhere, but when I saw them in the WS catalog a coupla years ago, I’d never seen anything like 'em), which can be useful if you like to stay ahead of the trend curve.
I love shopping at W-S. I’ve actually bought a few cookbooks of theirs. (on sale) For some reason I want the Bunt Cake pan that makes a sand castle shaped cake. I was in there and saw a cast iron skillet. It was really high. I don’t remember the exact price as I think I fainted it was so high. It was cheaper at Bed Bath and Beyond. Same pan, same brand. Then I saw it at Target for about 1/3 the price at W-S. But the La Crueset was expensive everywhere I’ve seen it.
Why contempt for the stores? If you pay $2 to stock a widget, and you can charge either $4 or $400 for it, why not charge the $400 if enough people are willing to buy the widget at that price? After all, we’re not talking life necessities here. This is mostly crap people don’t really need.
I was amazed early on in my marketing career by the science behind price testing. Back in the day, I put an online ad campaign together for a well-known service that tested three different monthly price points. The highest of the three did the best in the tests.
In many cases, if the price is too low on a given item, many folks believe the item to be too downscale for them and they won’t buy it at all. Given them the same thing at a price that many others would think insanely high, and they’ll buy like crazy.
To many people, the price of an item often conveys perceptions of quality, rarity, brand image, etc. I can understand a contempt for the consumer for being so easily duped, but for the store? They’re just being smart marketers. One can hardly fault them for that.
The “crux” of my “argument?” I was venting. But in point of fact, both the shakers were “imported from China,” and made of 18/8 stainless. They probably came off the same shelf in the same factory.
Maybe not in the grand scheme of things, but spending $50 on a martini shaker impulse buy is ludicrous.
I can see the point (like I said earlier) in some of the pricey things. Most people have hobbies or luxury items that are important to them. Mine are high-quality cooking implements and musical instruments. You pay for the stuff that will lift your hobby or passion to another level: the nice set of knives, the Calphalon copper-lined, the enameled cast iron (specific rant, though: there are much cheaper enameled cast iron pans out there that are every bit as good as Le Creuset.)
However, it is impossible to make a better martini in a $50 shaker than in an $8 shaker. You’re not going to serve a nicer dinner on a $100 table cloth. You’re not going to water your lawn more efficiently with a $50 retro sprinkler.
Yes, some people have the money to spend on expensive, pointless impulse buys. Let them. I’m in no hurry to stop them. However, I’m just as free to think, as Steve pointed out, that I’m standing there looking directly into the abyss where “rich” and “stupid” intersect.
I’m also free, with perfect, factual justification, to think that anyone who spends that kind of change on an item the twin of which can be found for 1/5 the price by stepping next door, is a chump.
Oh yeah. $50 for pruning shears. Pruning shears Riiiiiight.
Oh, and their patio furniture is insane. I built a patio table last year out of treated deck posts and an old “distressed” cedar table top (actually, it was somebody’s old workbench. I bought it from them for $15.) I stained it deep mahogany, and it’s now one of my favorite pieces. I shudder to think how much S&H would sell it for.
We go into places like that just to browse, rarely buying anything. What the OP says is true to an extent, but then we almost always find something that we like. Not the $30 dresser hardware, of course, but furniture, glassware, and that sort of thing. We did just order a hanging lamp from WS that looks great and at $63 is hardly exorbitant. These places do tend to have really creative stuff and it’s not always outrageously expensive. On the other hand, we do sometimes scratch our heads at the prices for some things, like the drawer pulls.
But a better dinner or a better watered lawn isn’t the point. The point is a better set table which is more to the taste of the person setting it. The point is a sprinkler that will look great in the lawn of their “we just spent half a million dollars renovating our turn of the century home.” Hell, I can make perfectly acceptable martinis in a jam jar, but I do own an $8 shaker (that I actually got for less than that on clearance somewhere).
Is it wasteful and inefficient? Could the $42 difference in cocktail shakers be better spent on Katrina victims? - yep, but its my darn money and I get to decide if I’m spending it on a cocktail shaker. And if that makes me a rube, well - I’ll take comfort in being a stupid rube who can afford to blow $50 on a damn cocktail shaker.
Right. But for some people, it’s worth just buying the damn thing rather than grovelling around at various other stores attempting to buy the same item for less. Now your $42.00 differential is an extreme case, but to many people, the time utility of money is such that they’d rather spend their lives doing something more fun than comparison shopping.
Remember, even if you buy the $8.00 cocktail shaker, there are those people (myself included) who will look at you and say, “wtf, dude, you could just put a plate over a tumbler and make your cocktails that way.” So * everyone * is subject to criticism. It’s a slippery slope. Eventually, you’re reduced to Diogenes who threw away his bowl after seeing a child drink using cupped hands.
Interesting. The “right” cocktail shaker? In my (real-world) example, you’d derive exactly as much utility from the $8 shaker as from the $50 one.
Remember, we’re beginning from the implicit assumption that you’re interested in buying a particular type of object (which also invalidates Finagle’s argument.) We’re not talking about a) $50 on a cocktail shaker vs. $50 on something else, or b) $50 on a cocktail shaker vs. some other method to make your extra-dry martinis. We’re talking about the price of an object vs. the price of a similar (or identical) object.
And grovelling? I found my $8 shaker probably 4 doors down from W-S in an outdoor, upscale mall. Most people were wandering from store to store, just like us. They were not beelining for the W-S.
You might derive as much utility, I might not. The economic concept of utility is different for each individual. My utility might be in giving W-S my money because my Mom works there. It might be in making the purchase at all, not in the actual use of the item. I may put $42 worth of utility in having a Williams Sonoma shopping bag. The important thing is to the individual buyer of the (ridiculously overpriced) cocktail shaker, the cocktail shaker is being sold at (or below) the right price or the sale wouldn’t happen. The cocktail shaker sits on Williams Sonoma’s shelf and becomes a clearance item in six months.
Now, once again, that might make the purchaser a rube. Or it may just mean that they are wealthy enough that $50 is like pennies in a fountain to them. Course it could mean that they are the type of person who buys themselves into bankruptcy on $50 cocktail shakers, and then this would be one of my favorite rants.
By the way, the $50 cocktail shaker W-S has on their website is from a French Stainless company called Guy Degrenne - Williams Sonoma has a steal on that brand - I doubt its the same shaker, but other Guy Degrenne shakers sell for $150+ on other web sites - couldn’t find one new for less than what Williams Sonoma sells it for. If you found a Guy Degrenne shaker for $8, I think you’ll have a profitable eBay business reselling the darn thing. I doubt you were looking at an “imported from China” shaker for $50 at W-S. 'Course you were there and I wasn’t, but is it possible you aren’t a connoisseur of fine stainless and stainless designers and didn’t realize what you were looking at?
Considering that the words “Imported from China” and “18/8 stainless” were inscribed on the bottom (although to be perfectly honest, it might well have been the $35 shaker…still overpriced,) probably not.
Fair statements, but I would argue that the willingness to spend exorbitant amounts of money on expensive consumer goods when virtually identical goods are available for much less expense, regardless of economic status, is irresponsible and rather disgusting.
To your last example, let me add one further category…one with which I am personally acquainted: the person who buys (or nearly buys) themselves into bankruptcy purchasing $50 cocktail shakers, and who never actually uses the damn thing, but just keeps it around for the image of having it. Personal utility or not, it’s foolish.
I agree, but then we start down the slippery slope of which of my needs/wants are irresponsible. If I buy books in hardback when the paperback version will be out in six months, is that irresponsible? I’ve started buying Lancome mascara - its really expensive, but I like it better than Maybelline (which is 20% of the price), is that wasteful? $200 sit around and look pretty pottery? If I throw quarters instead of pennies into the wishing well? Are $800 shoes wasteful? Is their an objective view on what is wasteful? 'Cause Williams Sonoma seems cheap after you’ve been shopping at Prada. (I went shopping at Prada once, I did find the whole thing rather disgusting - interesting, but disgusting).
From a national economy standpoint, if I have $50 to spend (i.e. I have it, it isn’t on credit), I’m better off spending all $50 of it - even on a stupid cocktail shaker, than spending $8 and putting $42 under my mattress. In that sense, it isn’t wasteful at all. The person who gets the extra $42 will turn around and spend it again - maybe more wisely, maybe less. But the money is out there doing what its supposed to do.
Now, me, personally really fiscally conservative, will spend $4 on a cocktail shaker, $30 on mascara (it IS good mascara) and stick the remaining $16 under my mattress. Damn the national economy!
And I will derive great enjoyment from being smug enough to ridicule (criticize definitely has the wrong intonation here; ridicule is the word) other people’s willingness to spend several times as much money on something that’s slightly more aesthetically pleasing, no more functional, and bought at a high-end store.
And if it’s food we’re talking about, then I’ll laugh hysterically at people who pay a lot more at Whole Foods for stuff they could have bought for a hell of a lot less at Trader Joe’s.
The comparable items at Trader Joe’s are sometimes of a lesser quality. For example, the Trader Joe’s Indian simmer sauces, while good, are nowhere near as flavorful as the Taj Mahal brand sold at Whole Foods (and elsewhere).
But see, ‘slightly’ is in the eye of the beholder. Going back to my earlier example, I’m willing to spend more money for a vase if it has a thicker sham, for instance, than its cheaper Ikea counterpart. To you it may be slight difference, to me, that difference speaks volumes about the quality of the vase.
Feel free to ridicule, however. Lord knows I ridicule cheap people every chance I get.
Why? The Trader Joe’s near me has worse selection, worse parking, and is more out-of-the-way. They also don’t carry 90% of the things I buy at Whole Foods, so the few things I may be paying more for is counter-balanced by the savings I get from not making a second, more incovenient trip elsewhere.
Or is one a “candelabrum”?