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Cheap

The High Cost of Discount Culture

By Ellen Ruppel Shell

(9)

| Others | 9781594202155

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Book Description

Product Description
An Atlantic correspondent uncovers the true cost-in economic, political, and psychic terms-of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possible

From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt-and almost everywh Continue

Product Description
An Atlantic correspondent uncovers the true cost-in economic, political, and psychic terms-of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possible

From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt-and almost everywhere in between-America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time-the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world.

Low price is so alluring that we may have forgotten how thoroughly we once distrusted it. Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the birth of the bargain as we know it from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line and beyond, homing in on a number of colorful characters, such as Gene Verkauf (his name is Yiddish for "to sell"), founder of E. J. Korvette, the discount chain that helped wean customers off traditional notions of value. The rise of the chain store in post-Depression America led to the extolling of convenience over quality, and big-box retailers completed the reeducation of the American consumer by making them prize low price in the way they once prized durability and craftsmanship.

The effects of this insidious perceptual shift are vast: a blighted landscape, escalating debt (both personal and national), stagnating incomes, fraying communities, and a host of other socioeconomic ills. That's a long list of charges, and it runs counter to orthodox economics which argues that low price powers productivity by stimulating a brisk free market. But Shell marshals evidence from a wide range of fields-history, sociology, marketing, psychology, even economics itself-to upend the conventional wisdom. Cheap also unveils the fascinating and unsettling illogic that underpins our bargain-hunting reflex and explains how our deep-rooted need for bargains colors every aspect of our psyches and social lives. In this myth-shattering, closely reasoned, and exhaustively reported investigation, Shell exposes the astronomically high cost of cheap.

About the Author
Ellen Ruppel Shell is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly magazine and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Time, Discover, Seed, and dozens of other national publications. She is the author, most recently, of The Hungry Gene, which was published in six languages. She is a professor of journalism at Boston University, where she codirects the graduate program in science journalism.

Critics

  • Nothing for Nothing

    Ellen Ruppel Shell has been studying the price, the value and the cost of things — all sorts of things, bookcases and summer dresses and plastic wrap and key chains and tube socks and hammers. And shrimp, the subject of a brief, appalling tale that i ... (read full critics)

    nytimes published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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    ht ... (continue)

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    Steve Earle1 said on Sep 16, 2009 | Add your feedback

  • Two books in one...

    This book is made of two different parts. The first part analyses low prices from the psychological, cognitive point of view. Why we are attracted by low prices, how we react, and so on. The second part analyses the reason for cheap prices, the implications and the costs. The two parts are loosely c ... (continue)

    This book is made of two different parts. The first part analyses low prices from the psychological, cognitive point of view. Why we are attracted by low prices, how we react, and so on. The second part analyses the reason for cheap prices, the implications and the costs. The two parts are loosely connected. The impression is to switch to a different book from a different author. While the first part tries to provide an objective and scientific perspective of the problem, the second part is taking a very strong position. While I agree with most of the ideas proposed by the book I’m a bit uncomfortable with this unusual way of mixing opinions and data.
    Also the book is ignoring the price mechanism and psychology for online sales and prices. Ellen doesn’t even try to analyze the differences between the traditional buying process and the new different online process. I purchased this book hoping to find this type of analysis. Not only I work in e-commerce, I also believe the psychological mechanism activate by the online shopping and purchasing (e.g. on Amazon) are different from the mechanism governing the traditional retail shopping and purchasing (e.g. Walmart).

    Is this helpful?

    Franco Folini said on Sep 16, 2009 | Add your feedback

Book Details

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  • ISBN-10: 159420215X
  • ISBN-13: 9781594202155
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