Cheap: the high cost of discount culture

303 Pages·2009·1.38 MB·English

by  Ellen Ruppel Shell

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction

CHAPTER ONE - DISCOUNT NATION
CHAPTER TWO - THE FOUNDING FATHERS
CHAPTER THREE - WINNER TAKE NOTHING
CHAPTER FOUR - THE OUTLET GAMBIT
CHAPTER FIVE - MARKDOWN MADNESS
CHAPTER SIX - DEATH OF A CRAFTSMAN
CHAPTER SEVEN - DISCOUNTING AND ITS DISCONTENTS
CHAPTER EIGHT - CHEAP EATS
CHAPTER NINE - THE DOUBLE-HEADED DRAGON
CHAPTER TEN - THE PERFECT PRICE

Acknowledgements
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ALSO BY ELLEN RUPPEL SHELL
The Hungry Gene: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry
A Child’s Place: A Year in the Life of a Day Care Center

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First Published in 2009 by The Penguin Press,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Ellen Ruppel Shell, 2009
All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Shell, Ellen Ruppel
Cheap : the high cost of discount culture / Ellen Ruppel Shell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-10113547-1
1. Discount houses (Retail trade)—United States. 2. Consumer behavior—United States. I. Title.
HF5429.215.U6S54 2009
381’.1490973—dc22 2009009503

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TO JO, ALI, AND MART . . . PRICELESS
I do not prize the word “cheap.” It is not a badge of honor.

| PRESIDENT WILLIAM MCKINLEY
NOTE TO READERS
This book is about America’s dangerous liaison with Cheap.
In a market awash in increasingly similar—even identical—goods, price is the
ultimate arbiter; the lower, the better. I know this because I live it. I buy $10
bootleg watches from street vendors, repressing the suspicion that in six weeks’
time said timepiece is as likely to sprout wings as to tell time. I buy three-for-
$15 underwear at Target, and discontinued glassware at the outlets. I graze the
home section of discount stores to stock up on key chains and flashlights and
“mini tool boxes” and other cool stuff too cheap to resist.
Like almost everyone, I have a wobbly budget to balance and a torrent of bills
every month. But thrift doesn’t explain this behavior. How thrifty is it to buy a
watch with a two-month life span, or a Lilliputian hammer “just in case”? I
would drive an extra mile to save a few pennies a gallon on gasoline but
wouldn’t dream of driving any distance to retrieve a fallen quarter from the
sidewalk. No, this isn’t about thrift. The craving for bargains springs from
something much deeper. Low price is an end and a victory in itself, a way to
wrestle control from the baffling mystery that is retail.
Alas, that control is largely illusory and those “unbelievable deals” all too
believable. The underpants shred in the dryer. The hammer is too small to bang
in a nail. The watch stops. Still, these “deals” are irresistible.
Knowing that bargains are ephemeral doesn’t diminish our desire for them. It
doesn’t keep us from leaving a warm bed on Black Friday morning to elbow
through the post-Thanksgiving mob. It doesn’t stop us from draining gas and
time to save two bucks on a case of diapers or Coke at the Big Box store. And it
doesn’t prevent us from cluttering our homes, garages, and rented storage units
with cheap stuff we may have forgotten we own.
As a nation, we’ve come to assume that low price powers both productivity
and the gross national product. Under this logic, the ebb and flow of cheap goods
underlies progress and rewards us with good jobs and bright futures.
Historically, key economists have endorsed this view, as have legislators. And
while a smattering of consumer advocates, labor unionists, and social scientists
grumble, outside of the predictable jabs at WalMart few have dared to publicly
challenge this orthodoxy. In these trying times, who but a hopeless elitist would
suggest that low price is not an unassailable good?
I plead not guilty to that elitist charge. For most of my life, the phrase “cheap
thrill” did not constitute an oxymoron. My personal devotion to cheap stretches
back to a college diet of ramen noodles and brown rice—bought in bulk. I
cultivated a tolerance (though never a taste) for horse meat, thanks to its
incredibly low price. Though I no longer eat palomino, until beginning this
project I did comparison shop for chicken thighs, and rarely passed a jumble bin
of half-priced anything—jeans, dress shirts, plumbing fixtures, gloves, coffee
mugs—without giving it a good tumble. My bliss was driving into Manhattan
late on a Friday afternoon and slipping into an unmetered parking spot free for
the entire weekend.
What changed me was the boot incident. A couple of years ago I needed a pair
of dress boots to complement a New Year’s Eve outfit I’d purchased on super
sale at Bloomingdale’s (you would not believe how much I saved). I went to my
local shoe store—a mini-outlet—and had a look around. The selection was just
so-so. I asked the salesman whether he had anything special, and he brought
over a gorgeous pair of boots from Italy. The leather was buttery, the look great,
the fit perfect, but the price well out of my range. I settled for some Chinese
imports selling for about one quarter the price. The boots were clunky and so
uncomfortable that on New Year’s Day I tossed them to the back of my closet,
where they landed in a heap of other unwearable “good deals” in bad colors or
unflattering shapes: a bargain hunter’s pile of shame.
The footwear fiasco got me thinking about all those cheap gloves and socks
and Tshirts and “Guess how much I saved?” gizmos cluttering my family’s life.
How much of this stuff had we used once or not at all and then packed away,
given away, thrown away? Why were we doing this? It was time to take a hard
look at this behavior, a behavior that on its face seemed not quite rational. And
why was there such a scarcity of things reasonably priced? It seemed that almost
all consumer good were cheap, like the Chinese boots, or extravagant, like the
Italian boots. Where, I wondered, was the solid middle ground that offered safe
footing not so very long ago?
Ferreting out the answer to these seemingly simple questions led to a
fascinating journey, from the hinterlands of Sweden to the back alleys of
Shanghai to the shipyards of Los Angeles. I met with psychologists, economists,
farmers, marketers, designers, historians, cultural theorists, mathematicians, and
retailers large and small. I spent a couple of years wandering a world of
consumer choices driven by a system that creates the desire it claims to sate.