Big Bad Wolves.

A while ago, a friend of mine and I had quite a heated argument about the companies we patronise, support and give our business to. She insisted that a pair of pants I bought for a much lesser price than a similar one she bought for almost double the rate still made more sense. It was a very politically correct thing for her to pay the higher price as she knew the other company I bought my pants from got their products made in third world countries at a cheaper rate and thus could afford the lower retail tags. So naturally I asked her if the company she bought her pants from, didn’t? She didn’t know the answer but assumed that since the price for the same pair of pants was higher they must have paid euro prices for the manufacturing!!!

This thinking is absolutely not uncommon among many people I talk to here. I have a feeling that the shrewd marketing strategies of some very savvy companies are now playing the ball with the same goal-post but with a few changes in the rules.

These companies (let’s called them the Nouveau-post-modern-The Thinking Customer-pleasing-companies) are absolutely aware of the media hype about the third world country sweatshop phenomenon. They know that if they are projected as people who ignore human rights of the third world residing populations, where most of their manufacturing takes place, then their sales in countries like Britain will take a big beating.
The average customer here sees documentaries of people working long hours in very small spaces, getting wages in a month that is less than what they make in a day, with no basic benefits such as health insurance or pensions etc. There is very little they do about the emotions that arise from such stark realities, and thus the one place they can perhaps purge a bit of their second-hand acquired guilt is by declaring a few corporations as 'The Big Bad Wolf'.

So what does the big bad wolf do now? It very intelligently kills two birds with a single stone (to be extremely clichéd, but exact). They keep the prices high, giving a false impression that it is so; since their manufacturing is not as cheap as their exploitative competitors. In the bargain they also make some extra dough which the other companies are passing on to their customers. Of course they spend on brand imaging and a few extra on "social responsibility" projects! But the sales figures point in the right direction.

Why do people refuse to see that no company that can afford the high street mall rent is still manufacturing anything locally? Why are people basing their ethical and political faiths by reading the RRP tags rather than the company documents that they can avail under the freedom of information act? Perhaps we are spending too much time on documentary watching. We are the pseudo aware. We the educated that can mobilise societies on the whole, choose the shortcut to information and the only people who seem to be benefiting are the ones that need to be put under check.