Brand Disloyalty or You Get What You Pay For?

This month I’m participating in 33 Days and 33 Ways to Save Money and Reduce Debt hosted by the NCN Blog. Today’s post in the challenge is about brand disloyalty. NCN says,

…it is important to note that there are times when it pays to buy the more expensive version of a particular product. But, for most situations, I have found that “generics rule”. Consider making the switch to to a different version of a product if you can get “more for less.

How do you decide what is “more for less”?  One time when I was in grade school, my mom thought she’d get more for less by taking us to the beauty college for haircuts.  At $5 a haircut, it was a good deal, or so we thought.  At the time I had beautiful long hair, and I wanted to keep it that way.  Unfortunately the beauty college student couldn’t get both sides of my hair even, and I ended up having about 4 inches of my hair cut off.  I was mortified.  We never went back to the beauty college for haircuts.

The point is, when you are deciding what is “more for less”, you need to take into account quality as well as quantity.  There are going to be times when buying generic will make sense, because the price is less, and the difference in quality is negligible.  This is often the case when buying food or cleaning products.

There will be other times when you are willing to pay twice as much for quality, because the product will last longer.  This was the case when we bought my daughter a Land’s End backpack last year.  In years prior, we had gotten her cheaper backpacks from Target, but they would be trashed by the end of the year.  This year, I didn’t have to buy a new backpack, because the Land’s End backpack from last year is as good as new.  In this case, quality definitely trumps the cheaper price tag.  The overall cost of the Land’s End backpack is less, because Liz will be able to use it longer.

Another thing to consider is a product guarantee.  When I buy jeans for Sam this year, I will be buying them at Sears to take advantage of their Kidvantage program.   Sam is so hard on his jeans that it makes sense for me to pay a little extra, knowing that if he wears out the knees before he grows out of the jeans, Sears will replace them.

Sometimes a product guarantee isn’t worth the extra expense, especially if product replacement costs are low.  In the case of Sears jeans, however, the slightly higher cost is worth the warranty, especially since I’m pretty sure we’ll need it.  I’d rather pay $5 extra for a pair of jeans I can get replaced for free, than save the $5 now, only to have to pay another $10 in a few months for new jeans.

My point is, when you are looking for the best bargain, you have to consider quality as well as price and quantity.  Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.

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