Buying In - (Page 7) buying in 7 quality and style variations? The answer is in the Desire Code, my name for the complex of factors, rational and otherwise, that spark us to make particular purchase decisions. The backdrop for cracking that code—and the reason it’s getting more complicated to crack— is the most interesting thing on display at Magic, a thing that absolutely nobody talked about, even though it was obvious everywhere you looked: the Pretty Good Problem. fifty-three pretty good kitchen ranges A couple of years ago, Consumer Reports tested and ranked fifty-three different kitchen ranges, priced from $400 to $5,200. Of these, it found that forty-seven were, over all, “very good.” Four were “excellent.” The lowest composite rating, given to a $1,100 Frigidaire dual-fuel model and a $750 GE gas range, was “good.” None were rated “poor” or even “fair.” Barry Schwartz is a psychology professor at Swarthmore College with a particular interest in the incredible (and at times paralyzing) abundance of options available to the contemporary consumer. He wrote a book about it, The Paradox of Choice. Once upon a time, the challenge for the consumer was navigating a world of faulty, shoddy, or unsafe products. But really, Schwartz argues, that’s not much of an issue anymore. The fifty-three pretty good kitchen ranges are a routine example of something that he sees happening in practically every consumer category. So when Consumer Reports, or whatever other authority is doing the testing, studies some group of products, the conclusion is invariably that most of the choices are, you know, pretty good. All that’s left is to sift among
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