Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "From Barbie to Airlines: The Business Method to Charge the Richest People More" video.

  1. This isn't illegal nor should it be imo. What it really highlights is two things - 1) the fictitiousness of the idea that just cos you have to pay more for it that a product is worth more (which undermines a lot of the luxury goods market as well as a good chunk of so-called 'brand value'), and 2) the importance of collective bargaining, cos the only reason they're able to get away with this is cos the purchases are individual (so you have no choice but to pay the store price cos they're not gonna mind losing a single customer) even if it's a scam at a group level. If all the buyers of doctor Barbies refused to pay the higher price, the company would have no choice but to lower it. This doesn't matter for trivial products like Barbie, but it DOES for things like wages.
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  2. Note that brand value was originally a sign of safety and reliability. Insofar as that is concerned it still has some utility, but all that really does is a set a floor wherein you should be suspicious of products that don't have any social standing at all as they may be of poor quality. But above that minimum, it means little. If you're not getting any real additional features or functional differences for buying the higher priced brand (that are proportional to the difference in price), then you're really just being taken for a ride (maybe even willingly, if you're a sucker for 'status'). The fashion market is a great example of this, as cheap clothes are often just as good as expensive ones in all functional aspects, but the pricey ones come with a name-brand sticker on them and so sell for a lot more.
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