I found this article today in one of my clipping services and it made me stop and consider a few things. Yes, we all want to be smart with our funds, but this may be a bit of a wake-up call for all of us.
Click on the Morton Salt Box for the article:
I believe the name brands are (or were) a "seal" of quality and care.
Recovering resources, making them safe, parcelling and packaging them takes time and money – therefore staff, operational infrastructure, health and safety, etc., all of which increase in cost as an organisation prospers.
As a child, I remember the fun of finding the cheapest gasoline. We would drive around for an hour and many times we would find a gas station on each of the four corners of a cross street, each offering gas at different prices. This was where the expression “gas war” comes from.
If we all just buy products at the cheapest price, quality deteriorates. Can you imagine how eventually this may result in a return to times when food and other products weren't safe>
Branding was just that -- a mark that indicated a particular brand had high quality and purity standards, over others. This used to be a differentiator that made a company number one amongst all competitors!
I would hope that has continued. However, I fear the breaking point comes when brand based/ quality organisations feel they must start cutting out this or that, to ensure they can survive as cheap products flood the market and use as their only difference low cost.
The trusted brand may begin to search for, and cut corners to meet the competition, their quality then plummets – all that is left is a gas war and the consumer is the loser in the end.
Let’s not get too carried away with this idea!
