Come on people... Open minds... What do you think about this? Are we influenced by price, thinking that the more insanely expensive the item, the better it must be...? Are we that gullible? What makes you believe a piece of equipment costing R10 000, for example, is going to be better than one costing R5000? Are we really listening with an open mind or do we allow price/marketing hype to dictate or colour our expectations...?
I personally think we South Africans are particulary susceptible to this kind of logic, more so than virtually any other nation I have had any experience with. Why do you think our cars cost so much in comparison to other countries? You dont honestly think its because input costs are 4 to 5 times higher here? We are very small market compared to international markets (about 3 million people in total in SA have any real disposable income), but why then do we have an ever increasing number of manufacturers trying to enter our market? If it was so expensive they shouldnt be so keen because margins will be low and competition tough. Obviously its because you can make a lot of money selling cars (or any luxury item) to South Africans because we are willing to pay incredibly high prices. We equate price to status and then justify that in terms of product performance, but in reality most people dont really care about the performance, only the price/status!
Try this experiment. Arrive at a braai and tell your peers that you have just sold your expensive car and bought a small cheap car of about a third of the price. You will get a very strange reaction (I know because I did this a while ago - I sold my M3 - long story), no matter how much you tell them how little fuel it uses or how much money you can now invest instead of spend. People will simply not hear you, its as if you have made a grave social blunder and people are trying to overlook your ignorance or bad manners, nobody wants to mention it in public. Now arrive at the same braai with a very expensive car, and trust me you wont have to bring the subject up, it'll be raised for you very quickly, people will be very keen to discuss it in detail with price being one of the key subjects!
The same goes for hifi. If someone looks at your kit and politely asks about it, generally they are trying to make sense of the array of boxes on display in front of them. If you tell them how great the sound is, how dynamic the bass is, how pure the details at the top end are, their eyes glaze over and they loose interest (if they arent that interested in sound), they tend to look at you as if you are a bit of a geek (which I acknowledge I am). But tell them how much it costs and you immeadiately get their interest and even respect! They immeadiatley want to know more, they will even tell others about it!
