Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

American’s shop for value: the most bang for the most buck. There are people who buy for status, and people who only buy the very best, but traditionally American product designers aim for a high feature/cost ratio, so-much-so that we take this strategy for granted. However, Americans who have lived overseas, especially in Europe, are surprised to find that’s not the case around the world, where the choice is usually only between the cheapest and the best. That’s because socialist nations are not used to buying for value, and are subsequently overcharged for everything, at least from our perspective. Unfortunately, in the rest of the world, the value found in American-made goods is dismissed as shoddiness. It creates a kind of implicit trade barrier that nobody ever talks about: consumers in other countries: Germans, French, Asians, will not buy American products; it's unfashionable, and American goods are considered inferior. American car-makers have really suffered from this: ask any foreigner and they'll say American cars are poorly made. Same with electronics. Definitely with food items, which are considered “junk food” or even unsafe. No amount of reducing explicit trade barriers will overcome this implicit one.