You get what you pay for

My first job was at Kmart when I was 14.

I was one of the kids who tidied shelves, helped you find a price and ‘checked the system’ to look for something when there was none left.

By the way, there was no system. It didn’t exist. Even if there was a system, I didn’t know about it and I certainly had no idea how to check it.

Anyway, when you’re a 14-year-old kid you start to observe patterns in customer behaviour and you learn ways to deal with it.

Q: Is there any out the back?
A: Sorry, all we have is what’s on the shelf

Q: Can you check the system?
A: Sure, I’ll just go out the back for a minute to look at the ‘system’

Q: Does this item have x?
A: I don’t know, but give me 15 seconds to read the box

But the most common question was, “which is better?”

And sometimes, what they meant was, which is the best and cheapest.

In other words, which is the best value.

For example; $650 BBQs. I think people thought I must have sampled them all, or have special access to secret grilling information.

Little did they know at home, at that time, my family barely trusted me to be in charge of cooking the onions.

So when you’re a 14-year-old untrained kid you learn platitudes like, “it’s a bit like everything, you get what you pay for”.

In this case, what they were paying for was bad advice. Because the truth is, of course, I had no idea about quality, let alone value.

Later, I was promoted to the photo lab where yes, we printed film photography.

There were three types of print paper you could choose; matte, value gloss or brand name gloss.

My job was easier when people would ask what I would recommend. There were example photos on the table.

“See which one you like”, I’d say.

I’d give them a minute to think, while they examined each and weighed up the prices. Then I’d add, “I don’t mind the value gloss”.

I was always interested when people didn’t take the recommendation.

The same company made the value gloss and the more expensive brand name gloss. In fact, they were exactly the same in quality. The only difference was that one printed with a brand name on the back.

They were paying for status and peace of mind, but when it came to ‘you get what you pay for’, they weren’t paying for better quality.

The customers were confusing quality and value.

Broadly, quality exists on an objective scale. Value is more subjective. They’re different.

Value is relative to the individual listener’s needs, desires, dreams.

Instead of obsessing over better podcast quality, what if you focus on increasing listener value?