It's been a while since I logged in, mainly due to work but also because of a self-imposed moratorium on blogging for two weeks while I tried to produce a first chapter that would assure my name was recorded in the graduation rolls for next year.
Anyway, I still won't be able to write for a few more days at least. Have to take off for St Petersburg in a matter of hours for work. In fact last night I had to stay at the office pretty much until 1 am, writing and polishing. Intended to go again primarily to answer questions sent in by Sankt-Peterburg Vedomosti (St Petersburg Bulletin) for the occasion. Before clocking in, I thought of going to Auchan, the French hypermarché in the Kommunarka district on MKAD ring road and Kaluzhskoe Shosse (better known to commuters as the one reachable by those eco-friendly IKEA shuttle buses from Metro stations Yasenevo, Tyoply Stan and Anino) in the Moscow beltway. It had been a while since I last went; I can't remember exactly when, but at least six months back for certain.
There is quite a bit of economisation to be made by a good day's shopping at Auchan, especially if one stocks up for a whole fortnight or, as one of my colleagues has consistently done after arriving two years ago, for the whole month. In fact it claims to offer a wide range of goods at 20 percent less than prices elsewhere (in this case, it appears to refer to its Moscow competitors - Sedmoi Kontinent, Perekryostok, Ramstore and Kopeika. Understandably a lot of Muscovites troop to this temple of consumerism especially in the weekends. Still my Inessa and I thought that if we went in the morning, we'd have a fair chance of running down a grocery list in around 90 minutes. In fact, up until the turn to Mega's parking lot I told her, her classmate Nastya and Vanushka that we wouldn't have to fight for shopping carts immediately after leaving the car. Well, shopping at Auchan has gotten faster and more furious since the last time I was there.
In time (or just after the hour mark) my Inessa and I had gotten pretty fed up with all the jostling, shoving and nudging through the crowds at almost every aisle. The original plan to finish at around 1 pm evaporated in the buying frenzy that whipped the crowd up into a tizzy. We were as guilty as everyone.
Still we wondered, even if savings were to be made, how smart is the regular consumer in not rationalising these false savings by buying more but pretty much unnecessary merchandise. My ducky calls it the Diet Coke-Big Fries Paradox: people make a big fuss about buying Diet Coke but don't think twice about loading up on chips. (Traditionally, this paradox has gone by the saying, "Penny wise, pound foolish". Another example is the almost religious avoidance of full cream milk (around 3.2 percent fat content) for low-fat or skimmed by most of the developed world. Having assuaged their conscience, regular consumers load up on a lot of unnecessary food, including deadly carbs.)
The day's shopping pushed me to realise something that has long troubled me about our contemporary lifestyle. Perhaps it's Mitsuo Aida, Japanese poet and calligrapher, subtlely reminding me again and again through his wall calendar that this "take no prisoners" ethic of acquisition could very well lead to the return of consumption (and here I do not mean it in the Madame Bovaresque sense of tuberculosis) as a leading cause of death in the 21st century.
Are we not, as human beings, dooming ourselves with our mass or conspicuous consumption? Are we buying more simply because we get more value for our money? Do we really need that extra shower gel flavour? Or the space-tech three-blade shaver? Or is Mr Gillette just getting the best of us? In connexion with this I read an article just now on the New York Times about the rapacious marketing strategy of the colour printing industry. What is astounding is how much colour ink actually amounts to, ounce per ounce. Here's part of that NYT article.
Here in Moscow, the buying frenzy will likely get worse before with little relief in sight: apart from its branches in Marfino, Khimki, Krasnogorsk, Mytishchi and Maryino, Auchan announced earlier this year that it planned to open more hypermarkets - two in St. Petersburg, one in Nizhny Novgorod, one in Yekaterinburg and one in Tyumen. French retail giant Carrefour and German discount retailers Aldi and Lidl are also thinking of entering the lucrative Russian market.
Anyway, I still won't be able to write for a few more days at least. Have to take off for St Petersburg in a matter of hours for work. In fact last night I had to stay at the office pretty much until 1 am, writing and polishing. Intended to go again primarily to answer questions sent in by Sankt-Peterburg Vedomosti (St Petersburg Bulletin) for the occasion. Before clocking in, I thought of going to Auchan, the French hypermarché in the Kommunarka district on MKAD ring road and Kaluzhskoe Shosse (better known to commuters as the one reachable by those eco-friendly IKEA shuttle buses from Metro stations Yasenevo, Tyoply Stan and Anino) in the Moscow beltway. It had been a while since I last went; I can't remember exactly when, but at least six months back for certain.
There is quite a bit of economisation to be made by a good day's shopping at Auchan, especially if one stocks up for a whole fortnight or, as one of my colleagues has consistently done after arriving two years ago, for the whole month. In fact it claims to offer a wide range of goods at 20 percent less than prices elsewhere (in this case, it appears to refer to its Moscow competitors - Sedmoi Kontinent, Perekryostok, Ramstore and Kopeika. Understandably a lot of Muscovites troop to this temple of consumerism especially in the weekends. Still my Inessa and I thought that if we went in the morning, we'd have a fair chance of running down a grocery list in around 90 minutes. In fact, up until the turn to Mega's parking lot I told her, her classmate Nastya and Vanushka that we wouldn't have to fight for shopping carts immediately after leaving the car. Well, shopping at Auchan has gotten faster and more furious since the last time I was there. In time (or just after the hour mark) my Inessa and I had gotten pretty fed up with all the jostling, shoving and nudging through the crowds at almost every aisle. The original plan to finish at around 1 pm evaporated in the buying frenzy that whipped the crowd up into a tizzy. We were as guilty as everyone.
Still we wondered, even if savings were to be made, how smart is the regular consumer in not rationalising these false savings by buying more but pretty much unnecessary merchandise. My ducky calls it the Diet Coke-Big Fries Paradox: people make a big fuss about buying Diet Coke but don't think twice about loading up on chips. (Traditionally, this paradox has gone by the saying, "Penny wise, pound foolish". Another example is the almost religious avoidance of full cream milk (around 3.2 percent fat content) for low-fat or skimmed by most of the developed world. Having assuaged their conscience, regular consumers load up on a lot of unnecessary food, including deadly carbs.)The day's shopping pushed me to realise something that has long troubled me about our contemporary lifestyle. Perhaps it's Mitsuo Aida, Japanese poet and calligrapher, subtlely reminding me again and again through his wall calendar that this "take no prisoners" ethic of acquisition could very well lead to the return of consumption (and here I do not mean it in the Madame Bovaresque sense of tuberculosis) as a leading cause of death in the 21st century.
Are we not, as human beings, dooming ourselves with our mass or conspicuous consumption? Are we buying more simply because we get more value for our money? Do we really need that extra shower gel flavour? Or the space-tech three-blade shaver? Or is Mr Gillette just getting the best of us? In connexion with this I read an article just now on the New York Times about the rapacious marketing strategy of the colour printing industry. What is astounding is how much colour ink actually amounts to, ounce per ounce. Here's part of that NYT article.
[F]or about $200 you can get the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 8250 that in just 14 seconds spits out a photo that equals the quality of those coming back from the photo finisher in an hour. For the same price, Canon's iP6600D prints a borderless 4-by-6-inch photo in 46 seconds, but also prints on both sides of dual-side photo paper.Intuitively of course we know that the printer manufacturers were banking (literally) on the killing they'd make in selling disposable ink cartridges. Now it seems there's even a class action suit was filed earlier this year against Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard. In fact this is one of the flagship issues in fair trade campaigns. But just how much they were profiting from this (to a sickening degree, it's now clear) was never all that stark - until today.The catch is that after you make an initial investment, you are going to pay at least 28 cents a print, if you believe the manufacturers' math. It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of product reviewers at Consumer Reports.
In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a retailer's photo lab, like those inside a Sam's Club, is as low as 13 cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home?
[...]It does not take an advanced business degree for those consumers to see how printer manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Canon make their money. They use the "razor blade" business model. It is named from the marketing innovation of King C. Gillette, who in the early years of the last century sold razors for a low price but made all his money on the high-margin disposable razor blades. Printer manufacturers also use this tied-product strategy.
Printers return relatively low profit margins. But the ink, ounce for ounce, is four times the cost of Krug Clos du Mesnil Champagne, which sells for around $425 a bottle. Ink is about the same price as Joy perfume, considered to be one of the more pricey fragrances, at $158 for a 2.5-ounce bottle.
Here in Moscow, the buying frenzy will likely get worse before with little relief in sight: apart from its branches in Marfino, Khimki, Krasnogorsk, Mytishchi and Maryino, Auchan announced earlier this year that it planned to open more hypermarkets - two in St. Petersburg, one in Nizhny Novgorod, one in Yekaterinburg and one in Tyumen. French retail giant Carrefour and German discount retailers Aldi and Lidl are also thinking of entering the lucrative Russian market.
