I expect customers have decided that most sellers are lying about “Made in the U.S.A.” and peddling the same Chinese product with a markup, either through definition shenanigans or outright lying. Look at Etsy.
No one wants to be a sucker.
6158675309 on
Even more impactful, I think, since the asian sourced shower head is an expensive one. You’d think if you are already paying a significant premium for a filter shower head another $100- $150 won’t matter as much. I would expect that consumer to be less driven by price.
I’ve seen similar tests and always the same results where the lower priced version outperforms the made in the USA one.
I live in the Chicagoland and an Uber driver was telling me he used to work for First Alert making fire detectors. The company opened a plant in Mexico but also kept the local one going. Eventually it shut down because consumers choose the less expensive one made in Mexico – otherwise they were identical
Thisam on
I honestly don’t care. I’ll buy the best price and quality. Who made it is immaterial to that as long as they are human. People in other countries deserve jobs also and yes, we also benefit from their stability because we live on the same marble in space. America doesn’t benefit by harming others. Economics is not a zero sum game.
Placing production plants into economies where the cost of living allows wages that allow reasonable pricing for exports makes a lot of sense. Moving those plants back into an economy where the cost of living is too high makes no sense.
The 1950s are not coming back, no matter how much anyone hopes.
the_real_orange_joe on
This is a really silly article, literally politically motivated advertising — so I’m going to treat it adversarially. For consumer items, MiUSA is successful as a brand strategy when presented with coherent claims toward quality, labor rights and consumer protection. They’re also doing a sleight of hand where they want to massive increase nominal profits by attempting to maintain margins, while doing nothing to modify the business. Also, I’d like to point out that other companies seem to be rather successful in manufacturing bathroom fixtures in the US (TOTO makes most of the stuff it sells in the US in Georgia or California).
ItsSadTimes on
People claim they’ll pay more for American made products, but they’ll completely fold when they realize what that means. They probably think paying more will be like 5% more.
EricCartman4Ever on
No one will pay “extra” for made in 🤡 land
It should be clearly a higher quality item or something directly related to food/cooking like a cooking pan etc lol
Empty_Geologist9645 on
As previously was stated. Companies actually study this question on their customer base. And, yes Americans would pay maybe 15% more . But ! Non Americans would pay only 5% more for made in America. And cost to produce probably increase more than 15%. So damn stupid.
NativeTxn7 on
People will often pay more if the quality justifies it. But people mostly want cheap stuff, and there is no way to make that same garbage in US for even close to what we can get it for elsewhere.
Any-Ad-446 on
Consumers are lying they pay more for Made in US items..If the items cost more than 15% more than chinese made ones they start to scream murder.
toolkitxx on
The problem here is, that the article is actually right. The conversion rate of the product is roughly 6:1, 6 shopping cart adds equal 1 purchase. For 24 shopping cart adds for the US product, there should have been a conversion into 4 sales and yet it was zero. Not even 1, but zero.
As a European I am sadly very familiar with this effect, as it is one of the reasons Amazon managed to be successful also in Europe. Europe is a collection of nations, which makes the conversion naturally more complicated and thus puts the US numbers in dire light actually. In Europe arguments could be made for a number of reasons, that no conversion at all happened, for the US this is a different thing. National pride as a sales strategy clearly fails in the USA.
tohuvohu-light on
I bought a car just as Japanese product were starting strong. A US salesman asked if I were buying American. I asked are you selling good cars at a good price? I drove a Celica.
Round_Ad_1952 on
I mean, in 1967 a pair of made in the USA Levis cost $6.
Adjusted for inflation that’s $57 today. You can find Made in USA jeans for that amount.
I mean, these are pretty dad looking jeans, but they are out there.
>…we priced a U.S.-made version of our flagship product **85% higher** than our Chinese-made one…
Shocked, I say! Just shocked!!!!! </s>
No_Sense_6171 on
Interesting, but not really a good test. If they had tested at a variety of price differences, they would have learned much more. There is also no data given on price points for similar products.
It’s not really earthshaking to realize that people won’t pay twice as much for essentially the same product.
14 Comments
I expect customers have decided that most sellers are lying about “Made in the U.S.A.” and peddling the same Chinese product with a markup, either through definition shenanigans or outright lying. Look at Etsy.
No one wants to be a sucker.
Even more impactful, I think, since the asian sourced shower head is an expensive one. You’d think if you are already paying a significant premium for a filter shower head another $100- $150 won’t matter as much. I would expect that consumer to be less driven by price.
I’ve seen similar tests and always the same results where the lower priced version outperforms the made in the USA one.
I live in the Chicagoland and an Uber driver was telling me he used to work for First Alert making fire detectors. The company opened a plant in Mexico but also kept the local one going. Eventually it shut down because consumers choose the less expensive one made in Mexico – otherwise they were identical
I honestly don’t care. I’ll buy the best price and quality. Who made it is immaterial to that as long as they are human. People in other countries deserve jobs also and yes, we also benefit from their stability because we live on the same marble in space. America doesn’t benefit by harming others. Economics is not a zero sum game.
Placing production plants into economies where the cost of living allows wages that allow reasonable pricing for exports makes a lot of sense. Moving those plants back into an economy where the cost of living is too high makes no sense.
The 1950s are not coming back, no matter how much anyone hopes.
This is a really silly article, literally politically motivated advertising — so I’m going to treat it adversarially. For consumer items, MiUSA is successful as a brand strategy when presented with coherent claims toward quality, labor rights and consumer protection. They’re also doing a sleight of hand where they want to massive increase nominal profits by attempting to maintain margins, while doing nothing to modify the business. Also, I’d like to point out that other companies seem to be rather successful in manufacturing bathroom fixtures in the US (TOTO makes most of the stuff it sells in the US in Georgia or California).
People claim they’ll pay more for American made products, but they’ll completely fold when they realize what that means. They probably think paying more will be like 5% more.
No one will pay “extra” for made in 🤡 land
It should be clearly a higher quality item or something directly related to food/cooking like a cooking pan etc lol
As previously was stated. Companies actually study this question on their customer base. And, yes Americans would pay maybe 15% more . But ! Non Americans would pay only 5% more for made in America. And cost to produce probably increase more than 15%. So damn stupid.
People will often pay more if the quality justifies it. But people mostly want cheap stuff, and there is no way to make that same garbage in US for even close to what we can get it for elsewhere.
Consumers are lying they pay more for Made in US items..If the items cost more than 15% more than chinese made ones they start to scream murder.
The problem here is, that the article is actually right. The conversion rate of the product is roughly 6:1, 6 shopping cart adds equal 1 purchase. For 24 shopping cart adds for the US product, there should have been a conversion into 4 sales and yet it was zero. Not even 1, but zero.
As a European I am sadly very familiar with this effect, as it is one of the reasons Amazon managed to be successful also in Europe. Europe is a collection of nations, which makes the conversion naturally more complicated and thus puts the US numbers in dire light actually. In Europe arguments could be made for a number of reasons, that no conversion at all happened, for the US this is a different thing. National pride as a sales strategy clearly fails in the USA.
I bought a car just as Japanese product were starting strong. A US salesman asked if I were buying American. I asked are you selling good cars at a good price? I drove a Celica.
I mean, in 1967 a pair of made in the USA Levis cost $6.
Adjusted for inflation that’s $57 today. You can find Made in USA jeans for that amount.
I mean, these are pretty dad looking jeans, but they are out there.
[https://www.allamericanclothing.com/collections/jeans/products/all-american-mens-original-jean-medium-stonewash-made-in-usa-aa101?variant=38419773325481](https://www.allamericanclothing.com/collections/jeans/products/all-american-mens-original-jean-medium-stonewash-made-in-usa-aa101?variant=38419773325481)
From the article:
>…we priced a U.S.-made version of our flagship product **85% higher** than our Chinese-made one…
Shocked, I say! Just shocked!!!!! </s>
Interesting, but not really a good test. If they had tested at a variety of price differences, they would have learned much more. There is also no data given on price points for similar products.
It’s not really earthshaking to realize that people won’t pay twice as much for essentially the same product.