Only a fool thinks price and value are the same.
The company was ready to close its doors; there was real financial distress. But on the other side, there was high brand awareness, but that was negative because Puma was perceived as low-priced. It had lost its cachet. It was a well-known brand without a presence.
People make you feel like a bad guy for asking for seven quid for your album, like you are slapping them in the face, when they'll go and pay two grand for a scarf somebody knitted in a sweat shop and stitched a designer label on.
Things that price at $4.99 sell very differently than things that price at $5.
And I also think it's a violin when you're selling it and a fiddle when you're buying it.
I think the price of the food can totally alter the perception of it. If I know something is expensive and the ambience is fancy, the food just invariably tastes a little better - and I feel like I'm getting away with something. But I'm also bored by most 'fancy' food.
People go shopping, we spend on so many things, and we just don't know. We don't know the prices of things. But gasoline, even when you're not buying, it's staring you in the face. Psychologists call this 'salience.'
He'd once heard a story about a monastery on the top of some mountain in Japan or somewhere. After a long trek in the cold to get there, the monks would offer to sell you a cup of coffee. You had a choice: There was a two-dollar cup - or a two-hundred- dollar cup. When pressed to explain the difference, the monks were reported to say, 'A hundred and ninety-eight dollars.'
You can't view inflation as a perception issue. Price rise should be seen as a reality. What is available for a consumer should be seen for what it is. There should never be an attempt to view price rise as a perception issue as a means of escaping the reality of price rise.
Nothing will teach you more about perceived value than taking something with literally no value and selling it in the auction format. It teaches you the beauty and power of presentation, and how you can make magic out of nothing.
For the consumer, fashion is fashion. You can buy something beautiful for $20 and you can buy something ugly for $1,000. It comes down to style. As far as the industry as a whole, it is hard to say. I don't like to separate the worlds.
Pay enough for anything and it passes for taste.
Designer pricing should hurt, but it shouldn't kill you. You wince when you hand over your AmEx, but once you get it home, you never regret it. You divide it by how many days you're using it, and suddenly it becomes affordable.
The value of an item - in the mind of a consumer - is simply the difference between the anticipated price and the price on the tag.
There's this myth that has been exacerbated by others that Starbucks means a $4 cup of coffee, which is not true.
Fairly or not, Western consumers associate Chinese products primarily with 'low price.'
