Barely a product
There is a class of products out there that exist because they are products, barely. They are usually the cheapest products available of a certain kind and are from a brand most people have never heard of. People buy these products because they need XXX and this product happens to be XXX. These usually are not high-function hi-tech products like mp3 players or cellphones but simple products like clothes racks, garlic presses, ice cube trays, etc. sold in large retail stores like Walmart or Target. The user experience is often miserable, the manufacturing quality terrible, and many don’t last over few uses or years.
Look around you. Do you have barely products around you? Did you get the cheapest trashcan from the store instead of spending the time and finding the one that fit your life best? Did you comparison shop for the cutting boards in the kitchen?
Barely products are side effect of the incredible diversification of products we’ve had over the last few hundred years and the industrial production and consumption that accompanied it. When the average person could purchase and own only a few dozen kinds of products, they spent a lot of time thinking about them and getting the right ones. They also knew the people making and selling the products that if something went wrong, even if the notion of warranties didn’t exist, the producer and the seller would lose social currency within the community.
I’m not arguing against the centuries of progress that we’ve made in bringing new and more products to the masses, but I do wonder if we are on the right vector when many of the things we buy go from the store to landfill so quickly. Do we need a mechanism to establish minimally acceptable products even if that means more expensive products? and if so, what will this look like?
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November 13th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
Wouldn’t the cost/quality ratio be a factor in determining your brand? If I specifically go out to buy the cheapest garbage can available, doesn’t that mean that I made that cost/quality assessment and decided that that’s the kind of person I am? I may be misreading it but I think you’re confusing brand/mark and product. I may not get a Rubbermaid brand wastebasket because there’s a perfectly good XXX brand basket which is $2 cheaper, but that’s not because I don’t recognize or value the product, it’s because I don’t care about having a name brand for it. To use another example from your post, one can purchase a garlic press for $4.95 (Regent) or $90.00 (Eva Solo) from Amazon.com. They are both products, but one relies on its name for innovative design in kitchen appliances and the other relies on the fact that it’s as cheap as humanly possible. I don’t think it makes one less of a product, just less of well-known brand.