"Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people."
- David Sarnoff, televison and business personality (1891–1971)
Since Sarnoff died in 1971 another factor has crept into the mix to confuse and confound the issue for us. Extraordinarily cheap products or knock-offs that may never work or that break after only a few uses.
These are often sold in stores which have a "no returns" policy. The products themselves almost never have a warranty. The ones that do force you to ship the product to the manufacturer at your expense, a cost the is often greater than that of a new version of the same item. This creates waste when we throw them away.
The prices of some of these products are as cheap as five percent of the originals.
People buy the cheap products believing that they can get five, ten, even 20 of the cheaper product for the same money as they would pay for one of the original.
What they forget is the time involved in replacing items that fail, the emotion wrapped up in being ready to do something but unable to complete the task because the cheap product won't work and the cost involved in travelling to get the item replaced.
There's also the risk that we will adopt the opinion, based on our many failures with cheap products, that "everything is made cheap today and nobody backs up their products with good warranties." That opinion may be totally wrong because we don't want to pay what a good quality item is worth. We may get what we pay for, but we don't want to pay much.
I was once told that the people of an Asian country in which I was doing business (by a businessman in and of that country) did not want top quality products. "They want third rate quality, they deserve third rate quality," I was told. Those of us who live in western countries may find ourselves as deserving because of our buying habits.
There is no doubt that cheaply made products and knock-offs put some legitimate and quality manufacturers out of business, resulting in the loss of great numbers of jobs in western countries. However, attrition would look after that anyway. Those companies that will not or cannot adapt to changing conditions usually disappear from the market for one reason or another. "Cheap foreign imports" is just a convenient excuse for failure to adapt.
Some manufacturers of good quality products adapt their marketing strategies and improve their products beyond what they had been previously in order to compete. Thus we have top quality products available to us at premium prices, if we are prepared to buy them. If marketted properly, these products will sell to a market that is committed to buying products that last. Over the long term, these products may have greater value than the cheaper ones.
As to competition bringing out the worst in people, you don't need examples for that. You live them every day.
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help people see the differences so they can decide based on realities that go beyond price.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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Comments: 15
I tend to agree with you on this. I personally have an exception, however, of a bigger ticket item, my car. I bought a Chevy Aveo(always "buy American") about 2 1/2 years ago, which I later came to discover is truly a Daewoo. I haven't had a lick of trouble out of her in the time I've had her, and would buy another in a heartbeat
I tend to think of cars as a crap shoot. Even brand new ones can break down. And old ones can go on for ages with very little out of pocket expense.
The article was not intended to speak about cars or quality imported stuff that is priced just lower than the originals, but products that are priced a tiny fraction of the originals. If they can break of fail, a large percentage of them will.
Liz, I can't speak to your comment because I am not familiar with that story. Can you tell the difference between a molecule of steel and a molecule of grass? I would guess that molecules can be manipulated today in ways that were not even imagined a few years ago.
In one case, engineering costs result in higher price, in the other a lower price with the focus on volume sales.
I am a huge fan of Payless Shoe Source. Yes, Payless. I regularly buy my shoes there. They are a zillion times cheaper than department store shoes. (Will Evans is rolling over in his grave, but he'll have to hear me out here.)
The funny thing is, I regularly get compliments on my Payless shoes. People ask me all the time: "Where'd you get those shoes? They are awesome!" I then laugh and say "Payless."
I find the quality of Payless shoes, when it comes to casual shoes, to be just fine. They are sturdy and comfortable, and they will last much longer than it will take for me to get rid of them because they are no longer trendy.
I have three pairs of knee-high suede boots I got at Payless last season when boots over jeans came into style. I love those boots. They cost me under $30. Similar boots at department stores would have cost $100 or more in some places, and the quality wouldn't have been much better.
Cheap can refer to how, what an item is made of, or how much you are spending for it. Inexpensive doesn't always mean "cheap", depending on the usage and of course your income. Value is a personal concept that can vary to an extent between individuals.
Thanks for the article.
Toyota builds quality, a lesson that GM has still not learned.
What some of you have said about imports does not refer to "cheap" imports, but imports of similar or better quality, which is not quite the point of the aritcle. The examples, however, do point to how competition has resulted in better quality products.
The Japanese once made poor quality cars. Then GM and Ford invited them to the US and Canada to learn how they built quality vehicles. The Japanese learned, improved their quality, reduced their defects, while the domestic auto makers cheapened their products to improve their profit margins.
Now GM is losing money on its domestically made cars. Part of the reason for that is that their pension plan causes them to have to pay out more in pensions to retired employees than they pay out in wages to active employees. The only way around that requires drastic measures of some kind. Splitting the company and having the ones losing money go bankrupt is one possibility.
Ford is bleeding badly too. Chrysler, of course, was taken over by Daimler Benz before it gasped its penultimate breath.
Wars helped the US auto makers to survive and expand. Might that be one reason why the US is at war today? I think so, though it's not a primary reason.
Scotch: just stick with the best.
We now make gasoline and diesel fuel from plants (diesel is the same stuff as cooking oil, actually), so why not other products?