DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post

**whimpykid** · 09-05-2006, 04:27 PM

BTW., I don't know if you folks know this, but there is this thing in economics called "price discrimination".

Basically, companies don't want to charge everyone the same price, since then that price has to be rather high and they miss out on those who would buy for less. But they don't want to charge less because in that case they lose out on those who are willing to pay more. So what they do is market the same product under different strategies. In effect, you can for example find expensive brand name food which is pricey, and food that is deliberately packaged so that it looks cheap (and makes you think "jeez, this must be poison since the package is a white bag with only the store name on it, can't they afford a better package!?") but is of same quality of the expensive stuff, and maybe even the same thing.

In other words: low price doesn't have to mean "poison", and ugly packaging is often deliberately that way.

See this article for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5274352.stm

09-05-2006, 04:27 PM	#6
whimpykid Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 611 Senior Member	BTW., I don't know if you folks know this, but there is this thing in economics called "price discrimination". Basically, companies don't want to charge everyone the same price, since then that price has to be rather high and they miss out on those who would buy for less. But they don't want to charge less because in that case they lose out on those who are willing to pay more. So what they do is market the same product under different strategies. In effect, you can for example find expensive brand name food which is pricey, and food that is deliberately packaged so that it looks cheap (and makes you think "jeez, this must be poison since the package is a white bag with only the store name on it, can't they afford a better package!?") but is of same quality of the expensive stuff, and maybe even the same thing. In other words: low price doesn't have to mean "poison", and ugly packaging is often deliberately that way. See this article for example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5274352.stm
	Quote