Consuming Interest
Over There
By LESLIE ADRIAN I HAVE just returned from a trip across the United States and first noticed how well consumers are doing there when I found that, in some juke boxes, it is now possible to buy five minutes of silence.
Consumers are sedul- ously cultivated by manufacturers and sales- men and there is a thriv- ing consumer protection movement. There is also Madison Avenue, of course, and an advertising industry which fills press, radio and television space and time with an appalling amount of seemingly perpetual nagging. Americans are, to some extent, inured to this kind of battering and make more practical use of the advertising they are subjected to than we do. Housewives (and husbands) do a good deal of comparison shopping and bargain hunting before they leave their homes or pick up a tele- phone to shop. The advertisers know this, of course, and newspapers are full of advertisements encouraging comparisons. Easter sales, end-of- the-month sales, end-of-the-week sales; buy more than a gallon of paint and you get a roller and tray free; buy a wedding ring and get a bride- groom's ring free; instant credit—no money down.
Instalment buying, it was recently claimed in testimony before a Senate Committee, is the greatest cause of bankruptcies in the United States. Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois has intro- duced a Bill requiring all articles sold on credit to bear a price tag showing how much interest is being charged. He claims that some finance com- panies put interest rates so high that consumers pay as much as twice the cost of the goods.
Senator Douglas's Bill was originally sug- gested by Consumers' Union which publishes Consumer Reports and sells over 800,000 copies of it monthly. CU does the same job Which? and Shopper's Guide do here but on a rather larger scale. Having been in operation since 1936, CU has had a twenty-year start on us, has greater re- sources and can now afford to devote time and space to campaigns on behalf of consumers and to consumer education as well as to comparative tests of all kinds of services and products. It is now campaigning for a Department of the Consumer. It has reported on fall-out in milk, road safety, air pollution and medical matters.
As in this country, the consumer movement is not as successful as it should be. Members of con- sumer organisations and readers of consumer publications are more widespread (and less neces- sary) in the higher income groups and among the better educated, in spite of growing support from trade unions. But consumer protection is be- coming a political issue. Governor Averell Harriman of New York appointed a Consumer Counsel in 1955, though his successor, Governor Rockefeller, failed to continue the appointment. But official notice is being taken elsewhere. Massachusetts has a Consumer Council and California a Consumers' Counsel; Connecticut has a Department of Consumer Protection.
Salesmanship is an honourable profession in the US whether you are selling goods, services or yourself. Even food in restaurants gets the hard sell even though, by entering a restaurant, you are already what the advertising trade calls 'pre-sold.' Thus, what you or I might call a bacon omelette is listed on a menu as : 'Hickory Dickory Bacon Omelette. Three Large Eggs Whipped and Blended Together With Crisp Crunchy Bacon. The EGGsact and Perfect Omelette. Plus a Cup of Dream Coffee Free.' Shish Kebab is : 'Omar Khayyam Shish-Ka-Bab Roasted in the Pit. Fingers of Steak Tenderly Skewered With Mush- room Caps and Ripe California Tomatoes. Served on a Bed of Fried Idaho Potatoes and Topped with Our Own Tangy Oriental Sauce.'
Volume is what every manufacturer, salesman and provider of a service aims at and, in particu- lar, it is the basis of all trading in discount houses (the first of which will be opened in London in the autumn). Prices are cut to a minimum by doing away with nearly all service. You serve yourself and take the stuff away in your car.1.11 discount houses display comparisons of list prices and their own prices. I noted some in New York: Eden's Full Circle and Priestley's Literature and Western Man, both published at $6.95, on sale al $5.29; long-playing records listed at $3.98, on Sale at $2.79. There's nothing phoney about this If the LP is found to be defective you can return within two days. If you buy a refrigerator, and thereby save $100-$150, you still get the manufae- turer's full guarantee. Discount houses are ell. tirely respectable, you don't have to be a Vie° ber,' you would be a fool not to do at least song of your shopping in them : many of them are as well planned and laid, out as department stores.
You pay for services in the US but what sere vices you get! In one of New York's two Main, railway stations you can buy a cooked barbecue° chicken to take home, have your necktie drr cleaned, buy property in Florida or Long Island, make use of a bank, a supermarket, a bar and drugstore, have your shoes shined or join the Diners' Club. Almost anywhere in the US Ycnir laundry can be done in a day or less and Plif cleaning in an hour. In New York, twenty taxis have recently been fitted with electri'' shavers : passengers use them frce.
Americans improvise amusing and attractive signs as easily as we put up dull ones that saY 'Closed' or 'Sold Out.. On a half-completed restaurant in San Francisco I saw a large sign, reading : 'Opening Soon Under New Optimists. On the back of a huge truck there was a sign 5° placed that it caught your eye as you tried t° overtake : 'Smile As You Go Under.' A friend of mine swears he read in a wine Ir't in New York : 'Genuine Californian BurguodY. Beware of Imitations.'
Previous page
