Very Strange but Common Myths about Prices
Just in case you didn’t know, a “myth” is a story or a belief that isn’t true or at least isn’t proven. Anyway…..
Add and I were walking to some local Chinese shop today to buy something for Add’s shower. The sales woman had 3 similar products with different prices. She said something interesting that got me thinking.
(Yi Fen Qian Yi Fen Huo) It’s an old Chinese saying that basically means, “the more money you pay, the better quality you will get” We have a very similar phrase in English, “You get what you pay for”. We often say this if someone buys some cheap thing and it breaks quickly. “Well, you get what you pay for”. It’s sort of making a joke and telling the person that they were cheap and should have bought the expensive thing instead.
I’m sure a lot of languages have a similar saying. The interesting thing about a phrase like this is that all cultures noticed this separately. These aren’t just translations. This concept was true all over the world. It’s like everyone who isn’t a total idiot agrees that 1+1=2. Even idiots know that one. It’s like some kind of “natural law”. It makes sense that better products are more expensive than poor quality products.
Here is where it gets interesting. It isn’t always true anymore but we STILL blindly believe it.
Think about it. Smart marketers know that most people already believe this.
Sometimes, of course not always, a high price can make more sales because people just assume that it must be better quality. People who know nothing about wine for example will often just buy the most expensive one to look cool. They believe it’s the best because it’s the most expensive.
People are really not very good at judging quality. I’m in the same boat too. It’s hard if it’s something you don’t know a lot about. In English, we have another saying, “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. It means we should judge a book by the quality inside and not how it looks on the outside. This is easy to understand but hard to do. We naturally judge things based on appearance and price, even if we don’t want to.
If something is in a beautiful package and has a high price, it’s hard not to think it’s of high quality. Often high quality things are like that anyway. The annoying part is that smart marketers can make poor quality products look like great ones.
In the old days, there weren’t so many products and people could use their common sense to buy stuff. There wasn’t really much advertising either. It was easy to see if one farmer’s tomatoes were better than another farmer’s tomatoes.
Now it’s getting harder and harder to be a “smart shopper”. It’s hard to know what to believe. I guess that’s why word of mouth is always the best. Everyone would believe their friend over some random sales person.
I’d love to read your thoughts on this topic, even if they are different than mine. Thanks for reading.
Andy
March 30th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
Скупой платит дважды. This is Russian phrase which means stingy man pays twice
March 31st, 2011 at 12:14 am
Hey Dima,
Thanks for the phrase. I wish I could read Russian. The letters look cool. We know so little about your culture and I feel foolish for that. I guess I shouldn’t blame myself because I didn’t choose to be born anywhere. Even if I try to have a world view, I can’t look at it without a little part of my Canadian side coming out. Anyway, point it, Russia seems cool and I wish we knew more about you guys. The western media is pretty stupid.
After all that nonsense, onto my big question. What does the phrase really mean? Why does a stingy man pay twice? Once for the bill and once for being embarrassed by others for thinking he’s a cheap idiot? Bad reputation I guess?
I’m interested in why they pay twice, I think I get it but I’d like some more insight from you or any other Russian. Thanks for reading and commenting guys!
March 31st, 2011 at 1:09 am
I’m Russian too )) I’ll try to explain. The first time you pay buying a cheap thing, but when this thing will broken, you’ll reconsider your choise and buy an expensive thing )
March 31st, 2011 at 1:29 am
Thanks Antonio, great explanation! It makes total sense now.
March 31st, 2011 at 2:51 am
Thanks Antonio for explanation!
Andy, what exactly your local media tell about Russians?) May be that we’re drinking too much?))) It’s not quite true)
March 31st, 2011 at 7:53 am
Hahah, and I’m Russian too. It looks like the sort of Russian club. Привет, ребят! (Hay, guys!) Yes, there are so many myths about Russia and former Soviet Union.
But now when I have some friends in Canada and the US, I know that they like to drink, there so many bars and pubs there, and many people after work go to such the places to relax. Our people more often go home after work. And I, for example, can think of 100 ways to relax and have fun without drinking. I just wanted to say there are a lot of drinking people all over the world and it’s kind of the international problem. And people who want to be successful shouldn’t do it, because it definitely cripple the person’s ability to think and analyze.
As about drinking so much, it’s definitely not true, we can say that only about the particular part of our society. I, for example, don’t drink alcohol at all, and many of my friends don’t either. Maybe I’m simply a lucky person.
It was just my opinion. I don’t like alcoholics, but like people who have goals in their lives.
And come to think of it! We have so modern and beautiful cities, wonderful and diverse nature, but when western countries shoot movies about CIS they by any reason show the world snowy Siberia, the bears wandering around, the people with vodka in the one hand and matreshka in the other one. Hahah, it’s such a nonsense
And…. about prices. I noticed it long time ago, that now the price doesn’t reflect the quality of the thing. So today I prefer to choose things evaluating them by other aspects.
For example one recent example. In the past I used to buy a lot of the expensive shampoos, but they didn’t satisfy me at all. And last week I tested the shampoo which was 5 times cheaper than the expensive one. And, you know, I didn’t notice the difference. It’s , for sure, not worse. And that’s the case with many many products in my life.
So I guess we can trust only our own intuition and experience. I wish there was the governmental organization that would check the quality of the products and set the prices depending on the quality. There would be less disappointments and useless wasting of money…
Thank you, Andy, for another great post
~Valerie
P.S. Andy, China is not far from Russia and Kazakhstan. You should visit them next time instead of Thailand, for instance
There are a lot of nice places here, you should see them.
March 31st, 2011 at 9:09 am
This does seem like a little Russian club here. I like it. It’s interesting, when Add and I started this site we obviously had no idea where it was going. Russia is a popular market for us. I wonder if somehow Russians and Canadians share some kind of sense of humor. There are of course many differences, but Russia and Canada are the world’s two biggest countries and we both have a cold climate. Maybe that makes some similarities. I don’t know.
As for what we learn about Russian people and culture, I’d say very little. Hollywood movies certainly portray Russians as kind of “smart, cool, rich “bad guys” I never believe that stuff but it’s in the culture somehow. I associate Vodka with Russia but I don’t remember hearing that Russians drink a lot. I have no idea as to the amount.
I guess the USA and Russia had some major misunderstandings during the cold war. I wish I knew more and I would love to go there sometime. I bet it’s beautiful in summer.
March 31st, 2011 at 11:38 am
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention this thing. Americans have this kind of prejudice about Russians. They picture Russians as brutal criminals. I don’t know where this prejudice came from. Maybe because in 80s and 90s some Russian people immigrated to America. And you know it’s very difficult and serious decision to leave your home and to move to other country, which you know almost nothing about (now we know much more due to the media and the Internet). So this particular group of people was adventurous and with a lot of illusions and ambitions. And there in America they had to do a lot in order to achieve their goals, maybe something not very good as well. And also they didn’t allow Americans to know their good qualities because they lived in the cliquey Russian communities and was lazy to learn English. So I suppose this stereotype could be derived from these times.
As for sense of humor, I think you are right. Russians are known with their wonderful sense of humor and you, guys, have the great one- I always think about it listening your podcasts
April 1st, 2011 at 4:04 am
Excuse me for offtopic! Valerie could you email me to computer24 @ bk.ru please.
April 1st, 2011 at 11:05 am
Today is April 1st and, like many other countries, we celebrate The Fool’s Day or The Humor’s Day, when people play jokes (more often practical jokes) and pranks on each other. Now, when I’m an adult, I don’t participate in such the activities, but back at the time when I was a child we with my friends liked this holiday and anticipated it very much. We liked to come up to strangers and say to them something like: “Your back is white” or “Your pants are dirty” and then to observe their reaction. It seemed very funny for us then.
, I sometimes don’t even remember about this holiday. Today, for example, I got some flash e-cards from a couple of my friends and was very pleased, of course. It’s always pleasant when people think about you and try to pick the most beautiful and funny postcard for you.
Nowadays, when I’m a big girl
I remember last year one of my friends joked not very funny. She sent me SMS that our mutual friend is pregnant. I was very shocked, because didn’t remember about the holiday. Of course, eventually I’d recalled. Of course, I told her that it was a pretty lame joke. I should say that it was kind of prophecy, because this our mutual friend got pregnant in 2 months after that incident.:) So today our jokes are not childish at all.
I was meaning to ask you- how do you celebrate this day in Canada, China or wherever you live? Maybe something funny happened to you or your friends on April 1st?
April 3rd, 2011 at 9:51 am
I am not a big shopper but I believe in the quality. In my experience, it has been always the case that if I pay more money I got the better quality. By and large, I believe that “You get what you pay for”.
April 3rd, 2011 at 8:17 pm
Hi Afra,
Great use of the phrase “by and large”. I’d have to agree with you that it is still generally the case. The thing to be careful of I guess is that marketers can use this little trick to their advantage. I’m not a huge shopper either but I read a lot about the sneaky tactics companies use all the time to make their products appear much more valuable than they really are.
April 5th, 2011 at 7:26 pm
Hi Andy, I think like you.
Im portuguese we say “O barato sai caro”, and the translating is “the cheaper become expensive”, because sometimes people choose to buy the cheaper product and it breakes, and then, they have to spend more money to fix that or to buy another one. I always try to analyse the cost-benefit, the features of each one before to buy it. Sometimes I need sleep on it to make the rigth decision.
I have to agree with you, today is much more difficult to analyse what is good quality and what is poor quality, mainly eletronic devices.
A hug for all of you!
April 9th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
Hi Andy
Im from Poland and to be honest a have to say that I don’t know any particular proverb about price and quality – maybe there is some polish too – but now I can’t remind it.
However I can confirm that in our country exist the same thinking about this. Additionally from my experiences I would like to say that currently we pay more not only for quality (or not)but also for brand I mean that we wand to feel better and show our position in society – of course it cost us more because of advertising and also because of that thinking that this is the staff difficult of access for poorest people.It’s not good but we can still observe it arround…
May 19th, 2012 at 4:09 pm
It’s cool
June 13th, 2012 at 5:36 pm
Little Dave says I become tumescent over all this!.!!
June 16th, 2012 at 1:04 am
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