Most people don't realize that they spend hundreds or even thousands of
dollars a year buying the heavily advertised (HA) brand products in the
grocery and department stores. There is nothing in the grocery store that
is rocket science. Many of the less advertised (LA) brands or store brands
are just as good or better as the HA brands. You are paying for the
brainwashing that many HA brand manufacturers put in their advertising
campaigns. It is not difficult to make shampoos, conditioners, cleaning
products and all those other products that can be found in your local
grocery or department store. Why are you paying 4+ dollars for baby shampoo
when you can buy the less advertised brand for half the money? Do you like
wasting money? If the name brand products are better why would companies be
spending billions of dollars in advertising? The answer is that they are
not better. They are trying to convince you that the high price they are
charging is some how justified by a better product. Even over the counter
drugs like aspirin can be bought for half the price of the HA brands. This
is a product that has been around for decades. The LA products are under
the same FDA regulations as the HA brands. Save a lot of money and don't
buy the over priced HA brands.

When you pay the higher price for the HA brands you are paying for the
ridiculous high salaries of the CEO's, private jets, golden parachutes and
for the billions spent on advertising.

Every time you go to the store you can save several dollars. Over time this
can amount to a significant amount of money.

"Ziggy" wrote in message
Most people don't realize that they spend hundreds or even thousands of
dollars a year buying the heavily advertised (HA) brand products in the
grocery and department stores...


Some generic products are the *same* exact thing as the brand name made by
the *same* manufacturer! And the manufacturer makes the *same* amount of
money per item sold as the advertised product!

How do they do that?

It is just an accounting thing is all. The manufacturer sets a price mark-up
for each product sold. The manufacturing costs are the same for the
advertised and non-advertised product.

The only difference is they tack on the cost of advertising to the brand
name product. So the manufacturer in this case could care less if you buy
generic or the brand name product. Either way they make the same profit.

If a local food manufacturer gives tours of their manufacturing facility, go
visit. You might be able to see them switch packaging from a name brand
product to a store brand or generic. You will see they do nothing to change
the food going into the packaging. All they do is switch the packaging. Same
food going into different package!

And if you think about it, a food manufacturing production line can be quite
complex. Not very easy to change the ingredients with all the machines
involved.

For example here is a cheese facility...
(same cheese from big blocks, they just cut it different sizes and stick it
in different packaging...)
http://tour.airstreamlife.com/wordpr...production.jpg

Stan Brown wrote:
Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:31:40 +0000 (UTC) from Jonathan Kamens
:
For example, I've yet to find any detergent, name-brand or
otherwise, that works as well as Tide.

/Consumer Reports/ concurs -- specifically, if I recall correctl;y,
Cold-Water Tide with Bleach Alternative.

You do have to watch out, though. Generic bleach, for example,
is often 3.5% while the name brand will be 6% or 7%. If you
do the calculations the name brand is often cheaper based
on actual amount needed to accomplish the task. It's easy
to see with bleach because they have actual percentages listed
on the bottle (sometimes in very small print) while most
other products don't give specific amounts.

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.