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6 Things More Expensive Because of Marketing
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One of the most fascinating stories I read in Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely, was that of Tahitian Black Pearls. It’s amazing because what happened with black pearls has happened with so many other products through the ages, you’d think we’d learn to recognize it… but we don’t! While I won’t reveal the whole tale, Emily Bobrow’s review, which appeared in the New York Observer, remarked that in Predictably Irrational…
We learn that James Assael, a postwar ‘pearl king,’ had little luck in unloading the gunmetal fruits of black-lipped oysters when he first introduced them to America in the 1970’s. But then he convinced his buddy Harry Winston to display a string of these lovelies in his Fifth Avenue window, together with an outrageous price tag. The rest is history.
For those who don’t know, black pearls are supposed to be very expensive. 
The story of the rise of the black pearl is an example of an idea Ariely hits upon frequently in the book. Again, from that review:
“We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth,” Mr. Ariely explains. Instead, we rely on context and relativity (is this scarf better or worse than the scarf sitting next to it?), which makes us gullible consumers.
Are there more examples out in the wild? There are plenty.
Bottled Water
This is by far my favorite example because it’s one that only recently became popular. Bottled water is one of the most ridiculous marketing inventions of the last ten years, even more ridiculous than a Pet Rock. Bottled water, in blind taste tests, is no better than tap water despite the ridiculous price difference. You can buy a thousand gallons of tap for the price of a single bottle. Americans spend $30 billion a year on bottled water, according to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
In countries where you cannot drink tap water, bottled water is more reasonably priced. My wife and I recently went to China and found that bottled water was mere cents compared to dollars here in the US. While you have to account for cost of living, the main reason bottled water was cheaper there was because it’s a necessity rather than a perk or status symbol. You couldn’t drink the tap water, you had to buy bottled water. Americans overpay significantly for bottled water.
If you buy bottled water in individually-sized 12 oz. bottles, I’m sorry but you’re a fool. If you like the convenience, buy a reusable bottle. You save yourself some money and you help out the earth.
“Enhanced/Fortified” Water
If bottled water was the first listed, enhanced water has to be close behind it. These are bottle waters fortified or enhanced with something special, like 50 Cent’s vitamin sweat or Michael Phelps’ pool water. Unfortunately, they’re also nearly all marketing hype. Check this out from the Consumerist.
Diamonds
Okay enough with the water, after water comes one of the biggest scams ever – Diamonds. Diamonds are forever and they’re rare, at least that’s what DeBeers would like you to believe. The reason they are rare is because the DeBeers diamond cartel owns practically all the mines and has inflated their prices by restricting supply (they recently settled a diamond class action lawsuit regarding this).
We can make perfect diamonds in a lab, so why are nature-made diamonds so expensive? DeBeers & Marketing FTW!
Wines & Spirits
Wines and spirits, and the beverage market as a whole, is just one big marketing machine churning out one brand after another. It’s been shown that the more expensive the bottle and the fancier the label, the more we end up enjoying it and the more likely we will pay. We have been conditioned to believe, especially in wine and spirits, that the more expensive bottle is the better one because many of us aren’t wine experts. Price is thus our proxy.
Dr Rangel gave his volunteers sips of what he said were five different wines made from cabernet sauvignon grapes, priced at between $5 and $90 a bottle. He told each of them the price of the wine in question as he did so. Except, of course, that he was fibbing. He actually used only three wines. He served up two of them twice at different prices.
The scanner [it was a functional magnetic-resonance imaging device that showed blood flow to parts of the brain] showed that the activity of the medial orbitofrontal cortices [an area of the brain that previous experiments have shown is responsible for registering pleasant experiences] of the volunteers increased in line with the stated price of the wine.
The pricier the wine, the more we enjoyed it. Crazy huh?
Coffee
For the longest time, Starbucks was the darling of many an MBA case study as being able to take a commodity type good, coffee, and turn it into a rich experience people would be willing to pay $4 a cup for. You can make coffee at home for a few cents per cup but people were willing to drive to a Starbucks in order to enjoy a $4 cup of coffee given a fancy name… all because of marketing.
How did they do it? They made Starbucks a brand about coffeehouse experience, rather than the coffee, and people bought into it. Don’t get me wrong, I have much respect for Starbucks and what they’ve been able to accomplish but the people paying for coffee each morning on their way to work are buying into the experience and not the coffee. You could argue that Starbucks coffee is better, but is it 100x better? 50x better? They successfully made the purchase more about the experience than the commodity good they were selling. When a business does that, they win.
Any Others?
Do you know of anything that comes to mind that fits this list? It seems as though everything on here was either jewelry (pearls, diamonds) or beverages (water, coffee, liquor), are there any others that I missed? I thought about throwing the iPhone on here, because that certainly benefited from marketing, but electronic components are expensive and their business plan is to profit from the recurring monthly service fees. Let me know!
(Photo: Black Pearls by jacbt, Diamond Ring by salreus, Wine Aisle by pgoyette)
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How about eBooks either on affiliate marketing websites or on the author’s personal websites? I’ve seen many “send-your-website-traffic-through-the-roof” type eBooks as well as eBooks about hypnosis or meeting your life partner or whatever that sell for $25, $45, $69 and more.
Considering these eBooks are all, well, “e”lectronic and therefore free to distribute it’s amazing to me they get so much money. Sure, the author puts in his time, labor and intellect. Sure, one has to format the eBook so it’s relatively easy to read once it’s downloaded (and printed on my own paper or read from my own screen). But consider that all that same stuff goes into “real” books that also costs bundle to manufacture and distribute and market and, yet, most hardbacks books are in the $25 range (paperbacks about half that much).
True Religion jeans comes to my mind. $185 for a tattered denim rag sewn together?
What about $400 hair stylists? What do they do that no one else can? No one else, really.
Ivy League schools. What specifically does someone learn in Harvard’s MBA school that isn’t taught at The University of Virginia, or some other well regarded but non Ivy League school? Not talking about the networking aspect, only the educational aspect. Many of those “lower tiered” schools have professors from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, etc. Does the professor keep the knowledge he/she acquired at those schools a secret from the students at the lower tiered school?
Good marketing is all about perception. It rarely has anything to do with reality.
Anything related to a wedding – dresses, cakes, photographers. Somehow the emotion of the event creates a hefty surcharge.
Nike (and other major maker) tennis shoes. But still, I love me some Nikes.
Cars… There are quite a few that use identical components but have a different brand. Mazda and Ford trucks, several GM products, etc. The price tags are also quite different.
Even when you get away from identical cars/parts, there are some vehicles that have a hefty premium simply because of the branding. There are many (comparative) deals to be had by shopping around.
Phone service and the cell phone industry in general come to mind. They plug and push the latest phones on you with their marketing tactics even if you just got a phone from them recently.
I love the water example – the only water I can taste the difference in is Dysani (sp) other than that it might as well be tap water in a plastic bottle. The best part is I’ve seen the small bottles go for as much as $2 each!
Drugs and Healthcare.
Imagine what would happen to the cost of the top 10 drugs sold in the US if big pharma couldn’t push their meds. Do we really need to have a Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis commercial in every 1 hour block during Monday Night Football? Not just one of them… all of them? I think not.
I worked in the pharma industry for many years, and it’s amazing to know the real mark ups.
As for bottled water, many of those guys don’t want you to know the plastic bottle costs more than the water. The profit margins are ridiculous.
Eye Glasses. Two pieces of glass and some wire.
Politics
Music CD-ROMs are crazy overpriced.
The biggest scam involves our health! Blaming fast food for the obesity epidemic. Weak people can’t stop themselves from thinking about food. Of course, they are the ones who spend millions on fancy diets. Can you imagine an intelligent person having a belly tuck? We are supposed to eat when we are hungry. We are supposed to drink when we are thirsty. Not 8, not 10 ounces of water a day.
Perfume, smelly water?
Erm…women.
Yes, women and metrosexuals make the prices higher, and also those that pertain to be ‘in-touch-with-their-feminine-side’. They are the cause as they are the demand for supply.
The sooner we get to proper no-nonsense living, the sooner these corporates/shareholders will get a big kick in their wallets.
This is totally transparent in their advertising. That is the social market grouping they all aim at.
What really is the point in a shop-sold diamond ring? Come on, it’s not personal.
Can’t we make coffee at home and invite friends around?
Do we have to allow Nike to have a massive profit margin from poorly paid third-world manufacturers? (Kids)
Is bottled water that good when we have a hand full of plastic to throw away too?
It’s all about image, and (sorry) women are at the forefront of spending power, whilst the product advertising completely focus on that fact.
If you disagree, spend a sad day infront of a TV and tell me how many daytime ads are about cleaning products/fashion/anti-age/make-up/perfume, etc, compared to beer ads in the evening. Even the diamond companies have started advertising daytime…while I’m at work and the wife is at home….erm.
in southern california, we have TERRIBLE tap water. you can even smell it. maybe if youre really thrifty and arent all too into cooking, youre fine with poor water. but not everyone is the same.
in indiana, where my grandmother lives, i have no problem drinking tap water straight.
maybe the terrible water is unique to my immediate surroundings, but ive done blind taste tests, and consistently can pick out the tap water (though a lot of bottled water isnt much better!)
really, it depends on where you live, what water you buy, and you yourself.
calling it ALL hype is just doing it an over-simplification.
hefty: Just because your water sucks doesn’t mean you should buy it in single serving bottles. You could filter it, buy it in large jugs (like for an office-style water cooler), etc.
What does Gavin Newsome know about bottled water? That is like quoting a high-school dropout in the Journal of the American Medical Association!
Find a better source…
TOOTHPASTE.
ask any dentist, the effect is the same whether you buy 50 cent toothpaste or $5.00 toothpaste. it is the toothbrush that does the cleaning.
thanks to clever marketing, people will pay much more for ‘advanced whitening formula’ and other gimmicks that have virtually no effect
“In blind taste tests, is no better than tap water …
If you buy bottled water, I’m sorry but you’re a fool. ”
HUH???????
Not sure which FOOL planet you live on but my tap water tastes like pool water with extra chlorine.
Any FOOL that tastes my tap water and Dasani water can tell the difference, even a blind person.
Your quite the dumbass aren’t you?
md: Get a filter.
Yeah because Dasani is so fucking special that Coca-Cola had to get magical municipal tap water for cents, filters it, adds small amounts of minerals for taste and charges you dollars for it.
Don’t buy into the marketing (the fact that you called it “Dasani water” says a lot). Buy bottled water for convenience and practical reason. If you’re worried about taste then get a f’ing filter as mentioned.
For those of us not in the city but using cistern or well water, filtering is not enough. In fact, to truly clean water for drinking from our sources you have to construct multiple filter systems and even then it can’t get everything. From chlorination to sedimentation filtration to ozone and other methods, no one filtering mechanism can do the job.
We often get tap water from either my mother’s or mother-in-law and truly it is probably better to drink this but trust me it taste like crap and I question its health quality. I not talking about chlorine I am talking mud. My cistern water tastes better.
We drink bottled water. I don’t like it but on the fringes of the city where there is no supplied water, water services are more expensive then buying bottles or 5 gallon containers.
You, city dwellers really have no idea what your drinking and those of you talking about buying filters, you’ve been scammed yourself by marketing, that can do very little to truly improve the quality of the water, just the taste. If you knew what happens from the time your water company recycles its sewage and it travels 20 miles to your tap, you would question drinking it not because of taste but because of the chemistry set and breeding ground 80 years of bury cast iron has developed. Is bottled water better I can’t speak to that question but I do taste a difference between bottled (economy- not name brand: that is nonsense), my well water, and city tap water.
My pool water is safer to drink then your city water tap.
I don’t know where you fools buy bottled water but I get a 24-pack for $3.27. That’s less than 14 cents a bottle, not dollars. It does taste different than tap water but I wouldn’t say better. It’s more for the convenience of portability.
What’s with the attitude? What just because you save and some people are wasteful gives you the moral superiority to call people fools?
There’s no attitude and no moral superiority, just a pure statement of facts. I didn’t call anyone who bought diamonds or black pearls a fool, I specifically called people who overpay on water because they’re paying 100x to 1000x what they could and should be.
For the folks who have terrible tasting tap water, I feel for you and I can understand your purchasing of bottled water but percentage-wise you’re a small group.
I’ve tasted the southern California water on business trips and their water quality is pretty horrible. Coming from a smaller area on the east coast, water quality was never an issue and I will admit to buying bottled water while I was in California.
If I were living there permanently, I would look into mass quantities the activated charcoal filters (like Brita) to remove all that extra chlorine.
SOFTWARE! Look at the prices of Microsoft and Adobe products. Most of the time it’s a nominal upgrade and they want you to shell out another couple hundred bucks.
Who knew bottled water could evoke so much emotion?
You may not want to believe it but there are places in rural America where the tap water is NOT safe to drink….. Ours comes straight out of the creek, after several farms and a mill…. We bath in it, flush the toilet with it, and wash the car in it, but filtering it would be prohibitive.
Now add to it the fact that one of us is allergic to chlorine in the city water systems, and voila – bottled water. The “big jugs” are not available here (rural)- just the gallon jugs. But sometimes it is cheaper to buy the 24 pack of water for $3 than the gallon jug for price varies.
There’s more to the world than your city life. Stretch your narrow horizons! And no, I wouldn’t move for anything – out here it’s really living the good life
Funny, the only one I ever buy or consider buying is the bottled water.
But in that case, I know exactly what i’m paying for: I’m not paying for water, I’m paying for the BOTTLE.
I’m paying for the convenience of portability, and the possibility of it being nice and cold and refreshing too.
But I know not to kid myself: the water is cheap as free, it’s the packaging and the convenience I’m paying for.
First thing that comes to mind if the cell phone industry.
For example, in Canada, we pay a monthly “system access fee” of as much as $10. This is supposed to be to develop and maintain the network… Now I know Canada is a big place but:
1) There is no coverage in most of the country, only in bigger cities
2) Cell phones have been around for a while and if each user paid $100-120 a month, I’m pretty sure the network is paid off.
A list would be things that AREN’T more expensive because of marketing. I’m stuggling to think of anything.
This is pretty localized but I’m sure not unique and I think it fits the topic. in the past month my local grocery store has moved the Bob’s Red Mill Oatmeal, which I have for breakfast every morning, from the cereal aisle where it has always been, over to the health food aisle and raised the price 60 cents! I think “health food” is a good addition to your list!
On the supermarket over here (Western Europe) 5 litres of bottled water cost 10, 12 eurocents. So, not too expensive if you live in a part of the city where the tap water tastes like chlorine mixed with iron…
1. cars
2. cards – hallmark is evil
3. laundry soap – make your own!
4. all the extras from the phone company – come on – do you really need 3 way calling?
5. beer
worst of all… hands down:
prescription drugs! they market to us.. so we can market to our doctors – now that’s sick!
I’m pretty sure Anonymous hit it on the head by pointing out the price of a 5 litre bottle of water in Europe.
My sister lives in a rural area with well water – she buys bottled water, but in the big jugs that go on the water cooler. And her tap water is filtered enough to use for cooking and cleaning.
Of course, if you’ve only got so many options, you gotta do what you gotta do. But Jim is right – you’re a small percentage. America spent $15 BILLION on bottled water in 2006, and that number is only now starting to shrink. That’s $50 a year for every man, woman and child (including infants that can’t drink water!) in America, when most of America has access to clean drinking water.
I don’t want to go off on a tirade here (I already wrote, and made a video, about bottled water on my own site), but let’s face facts – when the National Resource Defense Council did a three year study on bottled water, they found that 33% of bottled water brands failed FDA standards, which too high levels of arsenic, bacteria, or heavy metals.
Think bottled water is cleaner? There’s a 33% chance that it’s not.
Agreed about the bottled water being the best marketing price pump in recent history. I only buy it for hurricane supply emergencies (for when I don’t have any access to tap water).
However, I didn’t see anything in the comments about the bottles ending up in the landfill (even the recycled bottles don’t get turned back into water bottles as far as I know, they end up as planking).
So, your convenience ended up in the landfill for a few million years. If you gotta buy it, buy it big and refill.
However, the main point of the article was to come off with a product as being the premium and first to market. That way, you can charge a premium. Just create some “instant” credentials and you can lock up the premium slot (granted your product has to function on what it says it does at least on the perception level).
I disaggree with the bottle water entry. I’ve tasted pretty lousy bottle water brands (especially in the UK and US) but at least here (Portugal) there are several brands that do taste a lot better than normal tap. A lot more balanced and neutral. Some are costly but the trick is to find brands that are a lot cheaper but still taste great.
I’d add cola/pop/soda (whatever your local name for the sugary liquid you drink is). It’s one of the most heavily marketed items on the market, fairly inexpensive to make, and very expensive to buy. Restaurants in the midwest charge around $2.00 (US) for it. Way more expensive than the production costs!
Golf balls! $50 for 12 Titlest Pro Vs! Golf gear in general.
I see yet another unfortunate example of bottled-water snobbery.
You see, you are really lucky if you don’t feel a difference between tap and bottled water. I do. Where I live water tastes of detergent, especially at night, around after dinner. While I may not mind it if I’m really thirsty, I find the taste quite odd and really, really prefer bottle water. Besides, where I live it costs me around €0.37 (less than $0.50) for a 5L bottle (around 1.3 US gallons)
So, please don’t call everyone who doesn’t agree with you a fool.
Jim:
Let’s think through this. I agree that marketing works, but it’s not limited to a few products. It’s not even limited to products that were perceived as having inelastic or commodity prices.
The real answer here is that ALL products can be made more “expensive” through marketing strategy – it’s a technique called segmentation *wink*.
I have a rule that I follow – “any products could have a price range of 10 times (even in commodity markets) – so for instance a car is a product and it can be priced at $20,000 or $200,000.” Economics will dictate that you won’t sell as many units, but some times it’s worth it… just think luxury…. so, salt, flour, sugar, pens, cups, bras, condoms, butter, pins, fuel, buttons, coats, cakes, books, drugs, fruit, bread, internet access, radios, tires, computers, dogs, houses, dirt, planes, chalk and cheese… the list will go on and on. it’s safe to say that good marketing can increase the price you get for a product, and markets dictate the volume you will sell.
So in basic marketing if a company wants to attain a higher price, their strategy should deal with the other 3 P’s of marketing, Product, Place and Promotion. For example, while water out of your tap may be “free” (we’ll ignore that tax thing for now), water at a rock concert on a hot summer day may cost 3.99. W hat’s the difference? That’s right – Place – The rock concert; Promotion – people walking around in the throngs yelling Water!; and Product – water in the portable plastic container. That’s why the vendor can charge the premium…even if there are water fountains in the stadium.
see MIT’s online course for some basic marketing theory.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-812Marketing-ManagementFall2002/CourseHome/
Not to upset the bottled water loving crowd, but I saw an interesting segment on CNBC detailing the downside of the bottled water industry.
Seems there is a growing movement to discontinue, or at least curb, bottle water production. Their argument says that 40% of the bottled water currently comes from municipal sources (their data, not mine) and too much energy goes into the production of the plastic bottles.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=902977967&play=1
On my last trip on a small ship of the Lindblad Fleet, that has a great and long record of environment work, there was NO bottle water for the hikers to take along on the many scheduled shore trips. The reason? They simply got sick and tired of hauling along hundreds of cases of water in plastic bottles. Bottles that the ship then had to dispose of in a legal and responsible way.
To make up for the bottles they simply equipped all their ships with desalination units and produced all the water needed for the entire ship, including pure drinking water. Each passenger had their own reusable plastic jug to fill up with ice cold water and to have everywhere they went.
At the end of the voyage, all the jugs were picked up and completely washed and sterilized so they could all be used again. This might seem to be little, but if all the ships on the ocean, using large amounts of water, did the same we might no see so many bottles floating around in the ocean. Those are not only a waste, but are blamed for many bird killings.
When I see my home today, full of STUFF, and remember how my late wife and I had our most enjoyable time when we had little money, no debts, maybe one credit card, a used car without a/c; I really miss those days. We had just been assigned by the government to work for two years in San Francisco, an expensive city for us, even in though it was the haight of the flower revolution.
We still lived pretty good after finding a nice apartment within our means and furnishing it with used and junked furniture, a B/W TV, a fun cat, and some friends to come over.
I am sure we would not have done as well if my wife had been an American. She was from Argentina and was from an upper middleclass background. With a French father, she learned frugality, but more importantly, she was, for the most part, 100 % happy with life.
She would change, as the State Department wanted her too, They called it to be Americanized. Probably it was me who changed more as I struggled to have a decent standard of living on low government wages when my wife could not work or worked at very low wage white collar clerical jobs.
Then a child came along, and unrelated legal and medical bills began and never seem to have stopped to this day.
After losing my wife and finishing raising a child who earned a M.Ed. in mathematics teaching, I finally retired. I’d worked since I was twelve years old, but today my home is mortgaged, I have big debts, and low retirement funds. Regretably, when I die, my daughter will only have the loss of her father and not much of an inheritance.
I don’t get angry anymore, but am sad and disallusioned to find, through no fault of my own, that I have not much more at the end of life than did my parents. I guess I just got the wrong ideas.
Now, my hope is to learn again to live as I did during my earlier adult life. It is very hard though to go back to the simple life, no matter how romantic some people make it sound.
I will die If I see one more story in Money Magazine about the couple who left their high powered jobs in NYC to become bee keepers or something, after buying up some expensive country land and building a custom house with their millions of dollars saved while working on Wall Street.
Handmade premium cigars. Priced from a about a buck on up to as much as you want to spend per stick. There are what seems to be thousands of brands and within each brand, dozens of styles. So far, of the several hundred I’ve smoked, I think I can recognized maybe 3 different types, bad, good, and damn good.
How about PC’s? Your generic Windows box is the same as anybody’s generic WIndows box. There may be differences in service, but in my experience, all customer service is bad, although some are worse than others. Yet, you’ll see some makers charge more for theirs even though there’s no difference in the specs.
BOSE… bose audio equipment sucks and the only reason they are so highly regarded is because of marketing. If you actually listen to anything BOSE compared to something that you can put together that’s priced similarly, it sounds like garbage. And don’t get me started on the lifestyle dvd players and their software!!
well, no one in the industry buys bose…Meyers, JBL, yamaha is what the pros use…don’t know if they have a consumer line…oh sony sucks-really poor customer service, but, we use them when we have to…from a stage-hand.
sunglasses
If I could add just my experience with the black pearl phenomenon? Yes, they are beautiful, a nice one has all the colors of the sea, with pinks and greens, silver and blue..really lovely. However..on a trip to Raiatea that I took last year, in French Polynesia ($2500, including airfare from LA< 10 days, hosteling and camping,but thats another story) I visited the farm where the pearls are raised in vast beds. Um,..I bought a stunner for $40 USD. Stuck iit in my pocket, guess I should have declared it, oh well…Came home to LA< put it on a lovely waxed cord..voila. I have people asking me constantly how did I afford it on a nurses salary..hmmmm.
Nice site..keep dispellilng those consumerist myths! The bottled water is a good one, what a scam, and those billions of Plastic bottles in landfills, yecch,,
Ok- don’t mean to move the message board off the “bottled vs. tap” water thread, but one of the things that come to mind that is actually ON TOPIC (and not exhausting it) is “chilean sea bass”.
Chilean sea bass- now available for upwards of 15 dollars a pound at the supermarket or 25 dollar in a fine restaurant is actually Patagonian toothfish..an ugly ass fish that was once, like sea robins, a throw away catch.
It was remarketed by chilean fishermen as “chilean sea bass”. As the toothfish..you couldn’t give away the fish, but as the more attractive chilean sea bass, they quickly created a market for the fish..causing it to be fished to near extinction today.
and to the stupid chick directly above my post—
it didn’t cost you $40 to get that pearl,
it cost you $2540. Include the cost of your travel.
Cosmetics. It’s amazing to me how they can re-package and re-name the same shade stuff over and over again and continually jack up the price, especially with celeb endorsements.
Cleaning products as well. There are only a few that you could consider truly innovative.
Nitrogen filled tires. When a tire is mounted on a rim it contains regular air. Nitrogen is added to this. So if your tire runs at 30 PSI the mix of gases inside is only about 2/3 nitrogen from the bottle from the installer.
The air we breath is about 78% nitrogen already. Do you smell a scam here? I do.
iPods. They aren’t the best, but they are the most expensive.
Restaurant Guy, are you saying you can’t imagine any reason or reward for that person’s trip other than acquiring a pearl? I guess it wouldn’t be worth going to see the Grand Canyon unless I get to bring it home with me? Think before calling someone else stupid! It might be said that travel is overpriced, but you didn’t bother trying to make that point.
There are people out there who don’t have water at all. They don’t care how clean or dirty their water it, all they know is that they need water. Many of these people are children. The fact that we can sit there and argue about what kind of water to buy shows how much we have to be thankful for.
I’m not trying to judge, have attitude, or be mean; I’m simply trying to bring some perspective into our “major” issues.
That being said I do agree with most people who have written here.
Bottled water is just city water with a few added minerals, but city water isn’t so pure either. As most of us do, I also buy bottled water once in a while to quench my thirst BUT I also use this same bottle a couple more times during the week. Otherwise I just drink from the company “Glugers” (you know that huge blue thing that *glugs* each time you take some water?), or my fridge filtration system (how effective this is I have no clue).
For those of you who are into REALLY clean water, there has been much research showing how our bodies are so adapted to living with a lot of bacteria that when we suddenly purify everything, sometimes the body has been known to react and become overactive. Check out Chron’s disease, also called the wealthy disease. Seriously, Google it: Chron’s disease the wealthy disease. Go ahead copy and paste it.
No one knows what causes it but researchers have suspicions that it’s a too clean envirionment that shocks the body that causes it….
Thought for the day….
“Bottled water, in blind taste tests, is no better than tap water despite the ridiculous price difference”
Really? Because I KNOW I can tell the difference, and I know plenty of other people who can. Maybe there’s no difference for people who don’t care, but I care, and I can tell.
Love the article. It was no surprise to see diamonds and starbucks on the list, really.
There is also shopping and buying strategy that makes a difference. We saved quite a bit of holiday budget to wait for the expected after-holiday sales. That was part of our plan ahead of time. Since then, we have been looking through bargains worth picking up. It’s not about being overly frugal, but simply smart shopping. In fact, we bought a large LCD TV over the holiday. We also sold or gave away some stuff on Craigslist to those who can need some stuff more than we do.
As consumers, we are all trying to make do and get as much as possible for each dollar spent. Lately my family and I have been doing more research before buying anything, and have also done more online shopping and looked harder for better deals. As mentioned previously, we have not stopped spending, however.
One of the online sites we have found to be useful is:
http://www.uberi.com
They do have some interesting bargains listed that are not available even on price search engines. We were able to get more for each dollar. Hope that’s useful info for some.
Text messages
http://www.rantblogger.com/the-real-cost-of-text-messages/
DeBeers isn’t solely responsible for the over-inflated cost of diamonds but it’s so true that theses carbon based gems have been price padded brilliantly by many, many marketing campaigns. Check theotherdiamond.net for an example.
I definitely coffee more than any of the others… it’s relatively cheap t manufacture, yet businesses make a FORTUNE out of it!