I want more for my Money

Today while standing in the Queue at Bigbazar to make the payment, the person before me was murmuring with the billing fellow over the Quality of the goods that are being sold at the store. I didn't bother to checkup which brand made him so upset but all the while i was making the payment i was pondering over the Consumer Vs Producer perspective.

A Consumer's version of "I want more for my money"..VS "Iam giving you the best" of the Producer

While it is true that few of the consumer goods currently available in the market are not meeting the standards of durability, it would also be worth while to emphasize the role of consumers as well.

Consumers today no longer want the same product again and again. They are looking for new options and wide range of choices to choose over. This preference by consumers has sparked off an intense competition among the producers of consumer goods. Producers have expressed their anguish at various public forums that there isnt any guarantee that Consumers who buy a product once will for sure return to purchase the same product again. Since they knew their competitor is trying to woo this consumer with another interesting feature.

Also the latest innovations in technology have drastically cut down the Production times and the introduction of concepts like Lean, Sixsigma and JIT-Just in time, brought in the importance of maintaining less inventory as a result producers no longer maintain huge quantities of same variant of product as they used to do a decade back.

While Consumers complain that they are not being given their value for money in terms of durability the producers are trying to reduce costs day in and day out to attract more consumers towards their product.

For example many Shopping malls have now started to the usage of Paper bags in contrast to plastic bags which were used earlie. Though Plastic bags have longer life as consumers wanted more durable products, but the time they take to decompose is longer and they contribute to environmental pollution leading to global warming.So producers have come up with novel concepts like Jute and paper bags.

Also these products once they wear out, are subjected to recycling, to be processed as raw material for production purposes without leading to any wastage. This particular effort has paved the way to conserve and effectively utilise our natural resources and is also economical to consumers.

There are many Standard bodies which oversee this process and certify that a particular product is worthy enough to be spent the amount it is being quoted to. Hence there are tough standards to be complied to bring a product into the market. They ensure that a product is not touted to be used beyond its durability to ensure consumer safety.