I was hoping to see some red meat in the article in terms of who these harbinger households are, what kinds of products they are buying or politicians they support, so that I could either judge them for their poor taste or empathize with their misunderstood genius. Alas, the article seems to lack those kinds of details, except for the examples of Diet Crystal Pepsi and Colgate Kitchen Entrees. Both of those products sound baffling and horrible to me.
“Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
171–180 of 267 posts
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shoes are this way for a lot of people, in that some of us can keep a pair of shoes long enough that the next fashion cycle has happened and you can't find anything like that again. I got to the point where if I really liked a pair of shoes, I'd buy a second pair and throw them in the closet for nine months, and cross my fingers that I like the shoes in the second refresh more than I liked the ones in the first one.…
If you buy stuff that's in fashion, you'll always have this problem, because fashion changes so quickly. If you just buy classic old-fashioned stuff, then you won't have this problem. I have a pair of old-fashioned leather boots, and when they were worn out after 5 years or so, I just bought exactly the same boots again. Those type of boots have been available for decades, and I really doubt they'll stop making them…
If you follow fashion, you don't have this problem, because the new fashionable thing will always be available.
This problem only exists for people who buck fashion trends in areas (like clothes) that are highly subject to fashion. I just want to keep buying the same type of clothes, but they keep going in and out of fashion without me having any say in it.
For jeans, for example, I would love to be able to buy black 527s. That shouldn't be too much to ask, should it? But they don't exist, because they're flares, which are currently out of fashion for men, so tough luck.
But even for the most reliably unchanging style of boots I have bad luck: army boots. Used to wear them all the time. Always great fit, comfortable under all circumstances. Bought a new pair a few years ago, and suddenly they suck. I'm forced to wear sneakers these days. I haven't really find a nice model yet.
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#173This.Happens.To.Me.All.The.Time. All.The.Time. that Amazing Neutrogena conditioner, which was really good and lasted a year? Gone: if it lasts a year, its too good. that original low-sugar chex? gone. we invented three new flavours. that jam? gone. butter? gone. that cut of meat? gone. those pens? I mean pentel pens. How can pentel can an entire line of really good, fine writer ballpens? Gone. Sorry dude, it was you…
I have never seen this as anything remotely related to me. There's a big supermarket chain (the biggest in my country) that for a long time had a tendency to cancel every product that I really liked. Or at least make it harder to buy. Since I was young, I always loved spicy vegetable sandwich spread, but for many years I thought it had been discontinued, because this giant chain sold all the other flavours, but not m…
I've found that you can sometimes talk to the manager of the store and they can actually order most any product that any of their suppliers stock - or more of a certain product.
Our store would continually run out of the particular baby food we wanted and the cashier noticed me buying it all when it was in stock and asked if I wanted them to just order another box for me.
This doesn't help when the suppliers have discontinued it, and some of the larger chains are all automated, but it can be a useful trick. The computers try to notice what sells and order more (I've bought all of a certain item and noticed they stocked twice as much the next week, for example) but sometimes it can be assisted.
You can also email the company/distributor and ask for retail locations in your area, they'll usually know.
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I share the same sentiment. With all the replies you're getting, it seems like there could be a market for a solution. Not sure what that would be. Maybe a shoe finder app similar to ammoseek? Maybe a crowdsourced database of which current shoe model is rhe closest replacement to an outgoing one (like a dependency tree but for next closest shoe)?
I always wanted to create a social app for shoes and call it Sole Mate. Put in your specs and rank your own shoes and then find other people who have a similar fit to you and see what they liked.
Sounds like it could be an amazing feature for Zappos - "you picked this shoe at this size and didn't return it, here's what others who did that also bought".
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shoes are this way for a lot of people, in that some of us can keep a pair of shoes long enough that the next fashion cycle has happened and you can't find anything like that again. I got to the point where if I really liked a pair of shoes, I'd buy a second pair and throw them in the closet for nine months, and cross my fingers that I like the shoes in the second refresh more than I liked the ones in the first one.…
> Shoes are this way for a lot of people, in that some of us can keep a pair of shoes long enough that the next fashion cycle has happened and you can't find anything like that again. Try working from home. It's guaranteed that by the time you need new shoes nothing resembling your current shoes that you know and love is available any more. Same for a lot of other clothing items that you only wear outside.
Leather work boots hardly change. I have some Red Wings that are close to an 80 year design or something.
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never seen this as anything remotely related to me. There's a big supermarket chain (the biggest in my country) that for a long time had a tendency to cancel every product that I really liked. Or at least make it harder to buy. Since I was young, I always loved spicy vegetable sandwich spread, but for many years I thought it had been discontinued, because this giant chain sold all the other flavours, but not m…
I've found that you can sometimes talk to the manager of the store and they can actually order most any product that any of their suppliers stock - or more of a certain product. Our store would continually run out of the particular baby food we wanted and the cashier noticed me buying it all when it was in stock and asked if I wanted them to just order another box for me. This doesn't help when the suppliers have dis…
When I worked at a grocery store my manager hated this because you'd have to order a box of like 12 spicy vegetable spread, the person would buy one, then the rest would expire on the shelf. He'd usually just lie and say he couldn't order any.
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#177>They tend to make above-average use of coupons, and the coupons they use have above-average values. Isn't this kind of expected? Companies will give out coupons for products that don't sell so well. The higher the coupon value, the more desperate the company to get rid of this stock. So if these households like to coupon a lot, that means they accept less than ideal market fit for a price reduction.
Companies will give out coupons for products that don't sell so well. In my experience working retail, this just isn't the case, in general - unless it has changed in the last decade. Coupons have a couple of purposes: Loyalty and foot traffic, much like sales, and often on things they make a decent profit on. You wind up seeing Tide laundry soap, Gillette razor blades, and so on. CVS gives coupons on CVS brand items…
Coupons also allow price segmentation - they can sell that Tide soap for $20 to those who will pay it (and not bother with the coupon) and then offer almost perpetual coupons to those who know (and will bother), selling it for two prices simultaneously.
Things that aren't selling get discounted or clearanced, which can be fun when they overlap - you get the original coupons designed to promote the product, and the product flopped, so it's on discount, but the system still allows the coupon to apply to it - sometimes to nearly zero or even negative (most registers don't allow negative amounts anymore).
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#178> The researchers don't claim a causal relationship between these different factors — donating to losing political candidates doesn't make you prefer Crystal Pepsi, for example — but rather speculate that there is an "unobserved intervening variable" that explains both factors. Being older, poorer, and "out of touch" with what's fashionable, politically, culturally, and market wise -- because you have other problems…
It could also be that the very departments that put out Crystal Pepsi and bad political candidates are well-stocked with the same type of people who buy them - but it's just a small market.
Or it could be that they tend to lean toward new stuff, and 80% of new stuff is crap, so 80% will be discontinued relatively quickly.
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time I taste something I liked in the past and feel like it's not the same, I think if that's my perception which has changed more significantly than the product.
Dont they usually change the recipes? Cheaper raw materials (e.g. high fructose corn syroup instead of sugar for soft drinks), different production methods (same line used for all products but different flavoring), various cost optimizations that compromise the quality..
Some companies spend an inordinate amount of money and time to preserve the taste (Budweiser apparently has tasters who travel the various plants making sure it all tastes the same, like water should), but many other things have had significant drifts over time (and it's hard to compare as you need actual double/triple blind tests to even begin to get accurate data).
Re: “Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
#180>They tend to make above-average use of coupons, and the coupons they use have above-average values. Isn't this kind of expected? Companies will give out coupons for products that don't sell so well. The higher the coupon value, the more desperate the company to get rid of this stock. So if these households like to coupon a lot, that means they accept less than ideal market fit for a price reduction.
I noticed this for black friday & prime day sales as well. If you want an overstocked android powered device that a street sweeper found in an alley in Shenzhen, it will be listed as heavily discounted (although you don't know if it is actually a lower price than before). The flagship device you actually wanted will not be discounted at all.
Keepa (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/keepa-amazon-price...) is a Chrome plugin that shows you the historical price of any product, injected into the Amazon page. I use it all the time!