Outlet Culture
by modern living editor, Jason Capodimonte
All I wanted was a coffee and a carrot muffin. No carrot muffins. They got Blueberry Explosion muffins. They got Citrus Surprise muffins. They got Dieter's Buddy Low-Fat Health-Friendly muffins. Carrot muffins, though, they ain't got. I have a bran muffin.
Then I went across the street for some TDK SA audio tape. No TDK. This is probably the leading audio store in town, but if you want tape, they got Maxell. They have to make room for recordable DVDs and CDs and all the other wonders of modern technology so they don't have no room for TDK. I buy the Maxell.
Then it's around the corner to the drugstore for some Novasen. No Novasen. They got Aspirin, of course. They got Bufferin. They got every high-priced alternative to Novasen you can think of. But Novasen they ain't got. I'm still working on the Novasen.
If this is highly reminiscent of an article of a few weeks ago, it's meant to be. That article was about the reduction of choice in the marketplace, while this one is about how this reduction of choice gets disguised as an increase in choice.
Novasen, for example, seems simply to have been squeezed off the shelves by a proliferation of varieties of the higher priced brands. That increases revenue per foot of shelf, and allows the pharmacy to keep the Novasen behind the counter where it's dispensed to people on drug plans for a service fee (where I live) of $6.11 a pop, a considerably higher markup than the one you get from selling it off the shelf. And while there are more varieties on the shelf, it's still all expensive aspirin.
In what are now called electronics stores, the proliferation of new recording devices and media leads to a reduction in the choice of the older types. Old media are supposed to be bad, but somehow I think that preserving your vinyl Jackie McLean collection for posterity is more important than being able to watch American Pie on your laptop, or transferring your homemade porn to DVD so you can sell it on the internet.
As for the donut shop, it's part of a giant fast-food corporation. Somebody in Winnetka, Illinois forgets to order carrots, some of the outlets don't get to make carrot muffins.
So as the number of competitors is reduced, the few remaining competitors increase the number of varieties they produce to squeeze the little guys off the shelves. But there are more types of package on the shelf so it looks as if you have more choice.
In chain service establishments, service choices are dictated by head office. Thanks to modern technology, head office can even monitor the number of Rhubarb Raspberry Razzmatazz muffins sold at each outlet.
In fact, a large part of the problem is that we deal more and more with outlets rather than with stores. You could bet someone a hundred bucks, for example, that you'll strip yourself naked in the street the next time you saw an independent drugstore and neither of you'd ever get to collect. Thirty years ago you would have been going around naked all day, but then in 1972 who would've noticed?
When you buy at an outlet rather than a store, you get a choice of what is convenient for big retail corporations to offer. Big retail corporations are most comfortable dealing with big manufacturers because big manufacturers can reliably fill big retail corporations' giant orders and pay their listing fees.
The killer, of course, is that the reduction in our choices is always represented as an increase in competitiveness. Companies take over other companies, they tell us, to be more competitive. However, they're not increasing their competitiveness so much as reducing competitiveness in general. In a three-team competition even the last place finisher gets a bronze medal.
But maybe I'm just in a bad mood. After all, I haven't had my carrot muffin today.
Outlet Culture © Coolth, 2002
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