Wed 5 Apr 2006
Last Wednesday was my wife’s birthday. She asked for a pair of white rocking chairs for the porch. Newly-minted househusband that I am, I hauled two big boxes home from Wal-Mart and spent ten minutes assembling two nice new rocking chairs.
This was followed by twenty minutes scraping the gooey residue of several “this end up” stickers off said chairs. (I know, lighter fluid would’ve dissolved it right away.) Yesterday, Signal vs. Noise confirmed what I knew in my heart: whoever produced these chairs cares not a whit for the butts that sit in them.
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4 Responses to “The Sticker Test”
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Sean Says:
April 6th, 2006 at 9:21 amwith all due respect (i’m about to disagree with you ;-),
for those of us who shop at Wal-Mart or (in my case) Target or eat at McDonalds, this is part of the cost of getting the lowest price. we consumers have sent the message that the #1 most important thing we care about is price. price, price, price.
we have not, and do not, consistently send the message that we care about service or experience. and we get what we pay for.
‘it’s not what you will pay, but what the market will bear.’
if i get slow or bad service at the BK drive-through, can i really blame those low-wage workers? maybe a little. but i’m not paying very much for ’service’ am i?
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Jonathan Says:
April 6th, 2006 at 9:46 amYou’re not disagreeing with me, really.
You’re saying that I should expect low price, not quality, from Wal-Mart. Or, in the case of Target, a combination of low(ish) price and decent design. I concur.
Central to the whole Business 2.0 / Web 2.0 / long tail / yourbuzzwordhere movement is the theory that, as consumers and vendors become more directly connected, the market gets smaller. The business wastes less money advertising to people that aren’t going to buy their stuff, and the consumer gets closer to their ideal combination of features + price.
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April 6th, 2006 at 12:53 pmcool. we see i2i then
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Grins Says:
April 24th, 2006 at 9:11 amWhy on why do they use such strong adhesive on such things? It ruins most things. Oh and hi, Michele sent me