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...benefits for their employees to a bare minimum; fashion retailers have prioritized price over style and quality, often using their outlet stores to hawk a completely different line of merchandise. Finally, what kind of bottomless plate of scampi do you really think 15 bucks can buy? In her new book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, Shell argues that our never-ending pursuit of cheap has blighted our landscape, depressed working wages and (yes) contributed to the global financial meltdown. Shell talked to TIME about the problem with bargain goods, how to stop yourself from buying something...
...talk in the book about a drug study in which they administered painkillers, and when they told patients the drugs had been bought at discount, they were actually less effective. That's kind of terrifying. The response to a discount is profound in the human brain. What is less profound is the response to actually owning that object once you get the discount. We strive to get that deal, but we tend to devalue the object after we purchase it. For many things, the biggest charge we get is that transaction itself. Retailers and marketers strive to make us think...
...That was another thing you discuss in the book: unrealistically high reference prices. They'll put this price tag on an item that's ridiculous for what its actually worth to make you think you've gotten a good deal when it's marked down. No one ever pays full price for a mattress. There's actually been a lot of litigation around mattress prices because they set those reference prices very high to make you think that you're getting a good deal. In fact, often a department store will put one mattress on so-called "sale" and raise...
...argue in your book that the so-called "age of cheap" is unsustainable. Right. It's a short-term fix. I talk about Ikea being the least sustainable company on the planet. That's a quote, I didn't say that. But the reason is that they rely on consumers to carry huge costs for the company. (Read "Wal-Mart vs. Target: No Contest in the Recession...
...write about how working on the book has changed the way you shop. Are you spending less now that you're not focused on buying stuff just because it's on sale? I absolutely am. It's incredible. I bought mulch, just last week, from my local hardware store. It's more expensive than going to Home Depot, where I used to get it, but the guy there could direct me to exactly the type of mulch I wanted, he carried it to my car, it's much closer, and I got exactly what I wanted in the right amount...