Technology

I have loyalty to higher prices if they treat their employees right. I'm willing to shell out an extra dollar if it means the employees aren't getting paid shit an hour

Keep in mind that most off-brand products are literally the same brand name product in a different container.

In Canada we have a few off brand labels like No Name and Compliments. Take ketchup for example. The off-brand ketchup is literally the same brand name Heinz or French's it's sitting beside, but for $1.50 cheaper. That's because the off brand companies like Wal Mart and Loblaws pay for production cycle time at the main plants. So a run of Heinz ketchup will actually be a run of No Name ketchup. Heinz gets more money for the use of production time than they would selling that line of their own brand ketchup.

If you're brand loyal to something, you're just willing to pay more for a name, not the thing you want. Sour cream, mayo, toothpaste, even soap is all the exact same as the brand name stuff you're buying.

Most of the time you can tell where it came from by the production stamp. All companies have their own number so the no name ketchup would have the same product number stamp as the brand name one because it came from the same facility.

My only loyalty is to brands that have higher quality than the competitors. And that only last as long as they are maintaining their quality or another brand is increasing their quality.

What about Uncle Sam cereal? It's gone now, bought by a big cereal company and nearly immediately shut down, but there was nothing as fibrous and un-sugared on the American cereal market as that. Oh, sigh, Uncle Sam.

I mean, I wouldn't care what brand it was if there were anything comparable. But given that it was the only one like it, I was extremely loyal.

Thats like when we see headlines like "gen z are destroying the alcohol industry"

"We're losing money. People aren't buying our products anymore! What should we do?"

Shrink the size of the product and increase the cost. That will clearly be the solution!

In foods especially, they have substituted corn syrup for sugar, steroid+antibiotic pumped milk and meat for "real" meat (typical market chicken is a travesty these past years), GMO crops sprayed with extreme weed killers and pesticides for simple sun and water grown food. They like to say our food bills are going down in real dollars, but they're not, not if you buy organic GMO free - which is what most food used to be not so long ago.

In the 70s it felt like brands actually meant something. Since the 90s, they haven't. Brands have milked their loyal followers for every last penny of profit while cheapening their products as much as they possibly can. Brands have become an anti-pattern for me, if a particular brand is "commanding a premium" that's a sign to me to A) dig DEEP on pre-purchase quality information and if that's hard to come by (which it usually is) B) walk away from the recognized brand name - assume it to be of inferior quality to go with its higher price.

I shopped in the same grocery store chain my grandparents and parents shopped in my whole life since the 1960s until about 8-10 years ago. At that point they started milking their brand loyalists and literally jacked our monthly food bill 2x, +100%, and that's not industry wide inflation, that's how much they inflated relative to the competition. We went from spending 90% of our food, soaps, pharmacy/drug store purchases there down to less than 5% in the first year after we quit them, and since then they now get less than 1% of our budget, only catching our purchases when they're the only store open or other cases of extreme convenience purchasing. During the pandemic, we had instantcart deliver groceries from a competitor and a $120 delivered order, including $10 tip and delivery fees, were still far less expensive than the same products from the "leading" chain.

Having cereal for breakfast daily is akin to using soda for hydration.

Well, I was born in the 1960s and honey coated chocolate sugar bombs were already the cereal of choice among my kindergarten classmantes - and soda for hydration was pretty standard then too.

I think this may be a bad example. Different fruits are not necessarily sold in the same weights. Fresh strawberries are typically sold in heavier containers than a container of raspberries, and have been for a long time. Raspberries are just a more expensive fruit.