291–300 of 760 posts
"I will never purchase Costco clothing" Much of my wardrobe is from CostCo, effective suburban camouflage as well as being fine as clothes.
I can't think of another clothing retailer that has garments right there in front of you that you can touch and hold up to your body, the experience is far superior to just looking at photos.
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I wouldn't call it a gimmick when the business has been so successful for so many years. They target educated shoppers who want to buy quality at minimum markup and not think too hard about it. If I want a TV, I know Costco will have good ones at a good price. If I need socks, same. Their food is cheaper and better than Kroger. It's just a win-win for shoppers and Costco. The only tradeoff is selection and dealing wi…
Parallel to that, I have to imagine Costco makes a lot of money off of impulse purchases, which are induced by uncertainty in the specific items they will have available, plus mutable store layouts. Long ago in undergrad I took a retail marketing class and we did a field trip to Costco; the GM told us it was part of their policy to rearrange parts of the store occasionally so that you had to browse the entire place t…
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Which is of course entirely besides the point. While it’s receiving service the owner will be in their Honda accord (they drive it daily), but they will always have the top trim and will probably get a new one once it’s out of warranty and needs its first “real entropy” repair. Being rich is better than being poor. The Warhol quote has nothing to do with that fact.
>Being rich is better than being poor. As someone who started out very poor, and is now ~ 30x above that. I strongly subscribe to the idea that happiness from income is very logarithmic. The first 2-3x income was life changing. I'm talking going from eating pasta, rice and beans for most meals to fresh fruit and veg, lean cuts of meat. From renting a room in a noisy apartment with 4 other people to having my own plac…
I have a really mixed feeling about Costco. I hate it, I going there, I hate the crowds, the parking, the people, being hawked a credit card, a cell phone, whatever the vendors are selling. It makes me feel like a pig in a slaughterhouse waiting to get out of the store, I feel like it's the platonic form of consumption. We all go to the nice little consumption center like good piggies to get our sustenance and to get…
I've been to Costco (UK) a couple of times. It mostly seems to be: 4x the quantity for 4x the price (i.e. same price as any other store). I don't get it? I honestly think a large majority of people think it being in bulk MUST equal a saving? Is it just for like catering companies or families of 20 where the bigger size is kind of helpful? They do some nice discounts on Macs online though (can't say I'm a fan of their…
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Andy Warhol was an apologist for the toxic consumer culture in the US. It’s a big part of why he was so successful. Coke is a great example. There’s no product more useless and unnecessary than that flavored fizzy sugar water. Or should I say, high fructose corn syrup water. If you drink it, why? Probably because you were indoctrinated since childhood. Same goes for pretty much all fast food. There’s nothing good or…
Sometimes on a hot day for the short period the kid's napping I find myself at Home Depot searching for this or that tired from the work week under pressure as the clock ticks down having no idea what I'm doing and I make it to checkout tired no exhausted and I see the ice cold cooler the Coke its last moments before it's soaked with condensation open the door scan it rush to the car twist it open it screams wow some…
If I’m being honest I find a lot of this kind of stuff pretentiously performative. It’s a wholesale market with a membership fee. The food is nutritious and cheap and there are economies of scale to be had. There are no Costco people. There are no Whole Foods people. There are no Gus’s people. In San Francisco, I live a block from Whole Foods, a block from Safeway and a block past that is Gus’s. Costco is six blocks…
I think where you shop and what kind of products you buy says a lot about you. For example - I have two friend groups that sometimes meet up for drinks. One group drinks craft beer, fancy wine, etc. The other drinks relatively inexpensive beers and chu-hi. The experience in the two groups is completely different - everything from the conversation topics, manners, ideals, hobbies, how much people drink and for how long, etc. In both groups I have seen someone mention that they shop at a certain store, and elicit surprise from the other group members.
> In San Francisco, I live a block from Whole Foods, a block from Safeway and a block past that is Gus’s. Costco is six blocks away. We go to all of these places at various times. My gym is near Gus’s. Whole Foods has the biggest selection. Safeway has Envy apples. Costco is where we get the base load of stuff when we do weekly shopping.
I actually think this says quite a bit more about you than you may think. I can probably guess which way you vote, for instance, and where you stand on a range of social issues. I can probably guess how much income you earn, and whether you have a college degree. I may be wrong - we're dealing with probabilities after all - but demographics are real.
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> "What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All th…
> where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest To say that "the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest" by using Coke as an example is a significant oversimplification and is cherry picking examples to prove a point. The richest consumers buy plenty of consumer goods that the poorest cannot even dream of buying or even renting. If there was a truffle-infused Cok…
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Andy Warhol was an apologist for the toxic consumer culture in the US. It’s a big part of why he was so successful. Coke is a great example. There’s no product more useless and unnecessary than that flavored fizzy sugar water. Or should I say, high fructose corn syrup water. If you drink it, why? Probably because you were indoctrinated since childhood. Same goes for pretty much all fast food. There’s nothing good or…
Sometimes on a hot day for the short period the kid's napping I find myself at Home Depot searching for this or that tired from the work week under pressure as the clock ticks down having no idea what I'm doing and I make it to checkout tired no exhausted and I see the ice cold cooler the Coke its last moments before it's soaked with condensation open the door scan it rush to the car twist it open it screams wow some…
One: It's terrible that you're shopping at a big box hardware retailer instead of a local hardware store and drinking high fructose mass market soda.
The other: Home Depot usually has what's needed, at a decent price, nearby. And Coke from the cooler next to the cash register is convenient, cold, and delicious.
Neither of these are wrong, and they're both worth keeping simultaneously in mind: life should be both aspirational and satisfying.
You'll never live like Costco people You'll never do what ever Costco people do Never fail like Costco people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And then dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
Are you sure you wanna live like costco people? https://youtu.be/ainyK6fXku0 (I love the Shatner version, sorry!)