TOO MUCH! Those people who complain the most about the high cost of just about everything they buy and use, never seem to think that they may be part of the problem.
We expect too much. We demand too much. We, in many cases, get only what we deserve when the price we have to pay for a specific item goes up...up...and away!
Since we have adopted a more or less universal system of showing the price of a item in the more dramatic and mystery-making system of bars within a bordered box shoppers have lost a great deal of interest in prices. They agree that printing the price a second time would run the cost up needlessly.
Over the years I have talked frequently with people working in the ever-growing packaging field and related packaging “services” -
fancy stuff in complex marketing systems – and without exception - they have always showed me that we are often the primary cause of our own complaints.
Since I have been retired from any active participation in the business the very real relationship of product-to-purse has again and again. Often we make our own bed, but do not care to lie in it.
The Beer can or bottle we buy costs five times as much as beer contained therein.
The breakfast cereal container is another ready example
of such excessive costs, full-color on copyrighted “themes” - which don't come cheap and they are available in miles of supermarket displays in a wide variety of names from,in most cases, just plain old corn, rice, oats and whatever. Packaging costs can run two and one-half times the cost of the contents The same holds true in the frozen foods you buy, the baby foods, the tiny dessert boxes, too.
Your potato chip bag, that bottle of syrup, or chewing gum wrapper – are all extra.
All of this has come to be part of our modern life style. We have learned to cope with it in some strange ways. Foods cost too much o eat at home? OK. Eat out more! It can be “Fast”, too!
Food packaging is a multi-billion dollar dollar a business. They perform valued services for all of us by preserving our food from light, heat, oxygen, infestation and saving us from the gastronomic “blahs”.
If you really want to get into this subject of excessive cost, try counting up what percentage of your “transportation” costs area is frills or fabrications. How about your “clothing”, “home furnishings,” “entertainment”,”beautification supplies for home, garden, pet or person.” All are, in a sense, are “packaged” by what you wish them to be.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-31-06 [c456wds]
