I am thinking once again about some of the issues I mentioned in "Fakes", but this time just about pricetags.
The cost of an item in money affects how I think about it. I suppose this is true for everybody. HOW it affects our opinion varies from one to another though. I am someone who increasing monetary cost results in an often decreasing desirability and/or opinion of it. If a thing costs twice as much it better be AT LEAST twice as good or pleasing. So the dinner at a fancy restaurant with wonderful ambience and fabulous food may indeed be worth twice as much as the lower key café down the block. But if the food is at all off, or the music somewhat annoying, or the margarita less good and twice as much, I feel ripped off and annoyed.
The little black dress at J. C. Penney’s may (or may not) be made of slightly lower quality material, but look and feel as good as the one at Macy’s and the Penney’s one being 39.99, and the Macy’s one being 129.99 make the Penney’s one so very much more desirable and exciting to me. If my mother insisted on buying me the Macy’s one I would feel icky about it.
Others of course, feel exactly the opposite. In fact, finding out that an item came from a low-priced place like Penney’s would make them feel that the item was ugly or inferior in some way, and they would feel icky about someone buying them a gift from such a place.
Some of that is the "tribe" issue that my freind Noelle talks about. What identifies you with those you associate with, what you wear and where you got it fom, and the underlying knowledge of price, is important in many social groupings. On the other hand being too fixated on money can imply other things. I remember that one of the characteristics that truly marked Moll Flanders as a whore by nature was that she thought about every personal transaction, every transaction in general in terms of money......
A NYT article on money and freinds and "pods" .
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/fashion/sundaystyles/07friendss.html?ex=1147320000&en=51740dae1201c5bd&ei=5087%0A
So, How does price affect your views?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I apologize profusely if I have insulted anyone, it was not a direct attack, but rather a comment about how price can influences ones view, in particular, how it influences mine, and an interesting artical in the NYT. I have removed a comment from someone who thought it was aimed at them, for both of our sakes.
My views on price are simliar to yours. Once I had a job where (long story cut short) I *had* to spend afew hundred dollars on a student. Even though my objective was to spend it all and it wasn't even my money, I couldn't get myself to spend $70 on a pair of pants.
Reading this also made me think of a study that amazed me when I learned about it back in Psych 101. A store had two identical pairs of shoes in the window, one marked $6 and one marked $12. The $12 ones sold better. My mind is boggled.
I think a lot of this has to do with your age and where you are from. In the UK, there is a generation of people who haven't really got over rationing. And then my generation where everything is disposible. I have my family in Wales shopping at the Hypervalue and my family in the South-east shopping at Waitrose. I have new friends in Ca who eat out every day, buy the best wines and own planes. And what is wonderful is how both worlds are happy. My aunt will go nuts over a good bargain. My landlady will go nuts over a good vintage. As long as people are happy, I am happy. It is when people start using pricetags to be miserable or to make others miserable I get annoyed.
My post was et!
Ah well.
Instead of re-typing the whole thing, I said something on the lines of it depends on what I'm buying as to my concept of "expensive" and wether or not I'll pay more for something.
I can't understand why people would go for the $12 shoes.
And Emano, why did you have to spend so much on a student? Could you not get one discounted somewhere?
I made a comment to a friend once about how I had run into someone whilst in the underwear section at KMart. She completely missed my point about being embarrassed at having been sprung shopping for knickers, and said, "KMart! Oh, I never buy underwear at KMart. I might go to Target, but never KMart."
Which amused me no end. I didn't bother pointing out that the brand of knicker being purchased at KMart was identical to what was available at Target.
I was fretting one day over the expense of purchasing some new clothes. Turning to Mr Ata, I said, "what do you think of this top? It's $50!"
He said, "yeah, great deal, get it!"
And I had pause to consider differing perspectives on cost and value.
I remember reading an article about how West Germans flooded over to East Germany to get the same goods at a lower price and East German flooded to West Germany to buy from stores that were fancier and more prestigious. Sometimes these wealthier easterners ended up buying items they could get at their home stores, paying substantially more than they would pay at home but having the pleasure of carrying it home in a bag with a Name on it.
Northwest Native American cultures had events called potlatches. These were effectively parties to celebrate milestones, such as births or marriages. Average families would have small ones, Leaders and the wealthy would invite people from all over. The point was to have a feast and give things to all the attendees. Your social status was on display and measured by the amount and quality of what you gave away.
In some tribes this was so competitive and important that families would bankrupt themselves in the process. Other tribes were more low key and view the excess of other tribes as entirely inappropriate.
The tradition continues to this day, with Northwest Native families spending thousands of dollars on food, gifts, and additional cash gifts to honored guests.
Cheap fashion in the uk
I don't actually know how true this is (that it is fashionable to buy supermarket clothing) because I have never lived anywhere where supermarkets sell clothes.
Post a Comment