pull down to refresh
Not as easily detected in small portions
Also, not usually easily detectable immediately.
consumers are more tolerant of quality reductions than they are of nominal price increases.
But is there a reason that this is changing? Because the perception is that quality is getting worse, despite data access probably being better?
I speculate that it has something to do with having someone come up to you, looking you in the eyes, and telling you personally, "That thing you sold me was shit." Versus the nameless customer service calls that complaints get routed to in large companies.
In other words, I speculate that it has something to do with the decision makers never actually having to look their customers in the eye to defend their decisions.
It could also just be something related to norms changing as we outsourced more stuff to China :shrug:
Maybe, but I think we'd see more brands really try to stand out by maintaining quality standards if it were viable. The fact that this seems to be happening across the board, suggests to me that it's about tendencies in consumer sentiments.
Another version of that is that maybe high quality goods were never economically efficient and businesses are gradually finding the true equilibrium, now that decision makers have some distance from the customers.
Regardless of what's happening, it's an interesting question.
I recently went through a relevant personal experience. Our fridge broke down after only 4 years. The repair person told us there was a coolant leak. He said fridges don't last as long as they used to, partly because they now use a mix of aluminum and copper pipes (to save on costs), and welding the two metals together is error prone. He said all the manufacturers do this now.
I also did some research into fridges. It turns out that the most robust way to design them is to have the freezer on top, without a built-in ice-maker, which is how old fridges used to be (along with all copper pipes). But most modern fridges have the freezer on the side or the bottom, and come with ice-makers. For the dimensions we needed for our home, there are literally zero top-freezer options available, but I would have gladly sprung for one if the dimensions worked.
That definitely fits with my sense that the tradeoff between reliability and a complex feature set is pretty large.
Something like that should exist for brands, though. I think it comes from knowing consumers are more tolerant of quality reductions than they are of nominal price increases.