balance scale...
I think everyone carries a "magic" scale within. This scale is very useful, it's also need everywhere and all the time, it measure the balance between two things, everything from which brand of coffee to buy due to price differences, to whether it's worth it to pay a lot more for a house in a nicer school district.
Not everything in life can be measured by money, so how do we evaluate the intangible things? well, my personal opinion is that there is a potential VALUE to everything. Since nothing is free in this world, there is always a cost factor associated with whatever it is that we want. So the way to measure VALUE is essentially the evaluation of whether it's "worth it" to pay that cost to get the desired thing. That's where this scale comes into play, people always have options, you can buy the $4/lb coffee beans or the $10/lb ones, each individual would have different tolerance level or sensitivity towards their taste for coffee, so the inner scales are always busy at work, trying to figure out the "optimal" solution for that individual's perference levels.
For example, my teeth hurt so much so I want to go home to rest, but on the other hand, I don't want to disappoint my friend who was looking forward to friends showing up for her birthday celebration tonight. It's entirely a decision I have to make based how much I am hurting and how much I can tolerate the discomfort because I value our frienship that much more... It's indeed very hard to balance that scale in our heart. The "magic" scale dictates how we live our daily lives, and its tilts have major impacts on the decisions we carry on in life. It's called the art of balance!
-- posted by Pooh Bear @
5/19/2006 02:23:00 PM
1 Comments:
evaluation process generally depends on the amount of information available to the customer. We typically qualify for the lack of information with an error variable. the interesting aspects of the "scale" hold variables for value, depending on what sort of customer you are, and what the good or service being received is. It's these variables that the marketeers try to play around with.
most people probably consider:
alternatives to item / service
time cost savings with alternatives
cost of doing it themselves - raw materials, time
marketing's job is to avail them to a reason why they should choose that product or service because it's the best available alternative for them at the moment.
Shady marketing people hide facts -- smoking this will kill you, this greatly increases chance of heart attack
The economists typically value items as their payment price (Fair Market Value), indicating that the market will set the price of the good or service as due demand. This model also makes it difficult when a market is not freely informed--I saw a special on one of a kind fiery red diamonds, 1 ct going for over a million USD. With not a broad enough marketing, pricing becomes difficult as you don't know if you're priced above or below what a fair market value could be. This can be a misnomer as payment price is not always available, such as when Xbox360's came out. The MSRP was 400, but availability increased price to well over $800. The inverse is true with online music sharing - CD's in the store are $18, online it's free. But not necessarily free, because there are incremental transaction costs paid before the access is granted--ISP, computer, electricity.
It's the hidden transaction costs that marketers fail to take into account.
so when are we having food sometime, we'll get soft tofu.
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