9 ms·

The point is that branding often has little relationship to quality. It does allow brands to charge higher rates for basically identical homogeneous products.

by jgmjgm 7y ago

The point is that branding often has little relationship to quality. It does allow brands to charge higher rates for basically identical homogeneous products. As a teenager I worked in a potato chip factory. We also made chips for competing brands. Often this amounted to changing the bags the chips were put into. These brands would then charge different prices for the identical product. I once sat in on a lecture by a former CEO of a very successful grocery store chain. He noted that if you buy anything in a can you might as well buy the cheapest good because there were basically identical behind the label. Choose almost any kind of product. Often times multiple brands are created by the same parent company to provide the illusion of competition. Sometimes there are differences in quality/features but sometimes not.

toomanybeersies 7y ago
I've eaten a lot of cans of food in my day, and I can say with certainty that they are not all the same. That's not to say that the expensive brands are the best though. Maybe it's different in the USA, but there's definitely a huge variation in quality across canned goods in Australia. Most cans under a dollar aren't worth buying in my experience. They aren't all made in the same factory either, the cheaper cans tend to be made in Indonesia or other developing countries. I try and avoid food manufactured in developing countries, I've seen what their food safety standards are like, not to mention the pollution and heavy metal risk, or if it's even what it says on the can (even Europe isn't immune to this, see the Horse Meat Scandal). I have no particular reason to believe that my can of Tuna from Vietnam actually contains Tuna, or that it's free of mercury or lead. A 50 cent can of baked beans or spaghetti doesn't taste anything like a proper Heinz can, the beans are usually fine but the sauce is atrocious. But there are brands that are cheaper than Heinz that are just as good (don't taste the same though). Cheap cans of fruit are almost universally terrible. The fruit in the tins is terrible quality: underripe, overripe; too sweet, sour, or bitter. Bottom shelf tinned pineapple feels like I'm eating timber. Vegetables tend to be fairly consistent, although the cheapest cans of tomatoes often contain added water or tomato juice. Coconut milk/cream is worth paying for the premium brands, the budget brands are so watery. Pacific Island sourced coconut milk tends to be better, at least in my opinion. Fish is a real mixed bag. Not just for taste, but for sustainability, human rights, and pollution. It's worth doing some research into what brands are best. Some of the more expensive brands are actually the worst. Plain legumes (chickpeas, lentils, kidney beans etc.) are the only canned goods where the cheap brands seem to be the same quality as the premium brands. Your statement [branding often has little relationship to quality] still stands though. You can get high quality, cheap packaged food, you just need to spend a bit of time looking for the right brands (which may involve trial and error). Going for the most well known or most expensive brand is definitely not the way to ensure you're getting the best quality food at a modest price.
- stef25 7y ago
  > Fish is a real mixed bag Here in Brussels a few years ago, it was found that 1 in 3 kinds of fish that was served in restaurants did not match the type of fish on the menu. 150 restaurants were visited, 5 types of fish were ordered and 36 different types were served (lots of Pangasius). In 95% of cases, "red tuna" was actually white or some other kind of tuna. Source (in Dutch) https://weekend.knack.be/lifestyle/culinair/een-op-drie-vissen-in-brusselse-restaurants-zijn-niet-wat-wordt-beweerd-dat-ze-zijn/article-normal-622641.html https://weekend.knack.be/lifestyle/culinair/een-op-drie-viss...
- pnutjam 7y ago
  I used to work at Sysco foods and while I never attended one, the sales guys used to talk about "can cuttings" as a big sales tool. Basically, they would cut open cans of other providers and cans of Sysco products to show how much more product vs liquid they provided, or maybe the quality... Not really sure.
perl4ever 7y ago
You can debate endlessly the merits of different products in theory or in actual cases, but not that there are differences in quality. If multiple things are made on the same assembly line, don't you think they have dials they can adjust for different clients? I remember buying a generic roll of aluminum foil once, because what could possibly go wrong with something that simple? Why should I pay the premium for a brand name? Well, it was not wrapped around the spool quite right. It wasn't completely worthless, but it reminded me that there is a huge amount of detail that needs to be gotten right even for products that occupy little if any space in your mental world when you don't work in the industry. And a factory can turn dials to make infinite variations for different clients, including quality control. I remember trying some generic cereal, and it was very similar to the branded equivalent, but there was something odd and gritty in it. However, I think what leads to people being receptive to claims that it's all the same is the degradation of brand name quality - as soon as someone recognizes that brand equity exists, they can exploit it by cutting costs until people notice it. There's always going to be a lag that is profitable in the short term and information technology is making this more efficient, measurable, and tempting. My suspicion is that this is why white label goods are becoming more popular - it's not that brands are less useful in principle than they ever were, but everyone who owns a brand is succumbing to the temptation to strip mine it and this is making consumers become more cynical and devalue brands in general.

by jgmjgm 7y ago

toomanybeersies 7y ago

I've eaten a lot of cans of food in my day, and I can say with certainty that they are not all the same. That's not to say that the expensive brands are the best though. Maybe it's different in the USA, but there's definitely a huge variation in quality across canned goods in Australia. Most cans under a dollar aren't worth buying in my experience. They aren't all made in the same factory either, the cheaper cans tend to be made in Indonesia or other developing countries. I try and avoid food manufactured in developing countries, I've seen what their food safety standards are like, not to mention the pollution and heavy metal risk, or if it's even what it says on the can (even Europe isn't immune to this, see the Horse Meat Scandal). I have no particular reason to believe that my can of Tuna from Vietnam actually contains Tuna, or that it's free of mercury or lead. A 50 cent can of baked beans or spaghetti doesn't taste anything like a proper Heinz can, the beans are usually fine but the sauce is atrocious. But there are brands that are cheaper than Heinz that are just as good (don't taste the same though). Cheap cans of fruit are almost universally terrible. The fruit in the tins is terrible quality: underripe, overripe; too sweet, sour, or bitter. Bottom shelf tinned pineapple feels like I'm eating timber. Vegetables tend to be fairly consistent, although the cheapest cans of tomatoes often contain added water or tomato juice. Coconut milk/cream is worth paying for the premium brands, the budget brands are so watery. Pacific Island sourced coconut milk tends to be better, at least in my opinion. Fish is a real mixed bag. Not just for taste, but for sustainability, human rights, and pollution. It's worth doing some research into what brands are best. Some of the more expensive brands are actually the worst. Plain legumes (chickpeas, lentils, kidney beans etc.) are the only canned goods where the cheap brands seem to be the same quality as the premium brands. Your statement [branding often has little relationship to quality] still stands though. You can get high quality, cheap packaged food, you just need to spend a bit of time looking for the right brands (which may involve trial and error). Going for the most well known or most expensive brand is definitely not the way to ensure you're getting the best quality food at a modest price.

stef25 7y ago
> Fish is a real mixed bag Here in Brussels a few years ago, it was found that 1 in 3 kinds of fish that was served in restaurants did not match the type of fish on the menu. 150 restaurants were visited, 5 types of fish were ordered and 36 different types were served (lots of Pangasius). In 95% of cases, "red tuna" was actually white or some other kind of tuna. Source (in Dutch) https://weekend.knack.be/lifestyle/culinair/een-op-drie-vissen-in-brusselse-restaurants-zijn-niet-wat-wordt-beweerd-dat-ze-zijn/article-normal-622641.html https://weekend.knack.be/lifestyle/culinair/een-op-drie-viss...
pnutjam 7y ago
I used to work at Sysco foods and while I never attended one, the sales guys used to talk about "can cuttings" as a big sales tool. Basically, they would cut open cans of other providers and cans of Sysco products to show how much more product vs liquid they provided, or maybe the quality... Not really sure.

perl4ever 7y ago

You can debate endlessly the merits of different products in theory or in actual cases, but not that there are differences in quality. If multiple things are made on the same assembly line, don't you think they have dials they can adjust for different clients? I remember buying a generic roll of aluminum foil once, because what could possibly go wrong with something that simple? Why should I pay the premium for a brand name? Well, it was not wrapped around the spool quite right. It wasn't completely worthless, but it reminded me that there is a huge amount of detail that needs to be gotten right even for products that occupy little if any space in your mental world when you don't work in the industry. And a factory can turn dials to make infinite variations for different clients, including quality control. I remember trying some generic cereal, and it was very similar to the branded equivalent, but there was something odd and gritty in it. However, I think what leads to people being receptive to claims that it's all the same is the degradation of brand name quality - as soon as someone recognizes that brand equity exists, they can exploit it by cutting costs until people notice it. There's always going to be a lag that is profitable in the short term and information technology is making this more efficient, measurable, and tempting. My suspicion is that this is why white label goods are becoming more popular - it's not that brands are less useful in principle than they ever were, but everyone who owns a brand is succumbing to the temptation to strip mine it and this is making consumers become more cynical and devalue brands in general.