I notice that my tobacco packet includes merely a helpline number for people who want to quit, and not a grotesque picture of someone in the advanced stages of a smoking-related disease. This leads me to conclude that I might be prepared to pay more for my tobacco if its legally required guilt trips were in text form rather than pictures. Am I on to something?
Ms Lovegrove, Oxford
Dear Ms Lovegrove,
I think you just might be. The pictures you describe are a form of “product sabotage”, a tactic used by companies with some pricing power. Some customers are very sensitive to price while others pay less attention to it. The sensible business, then, will try to separate the two groups and charge them different prices for similar products. This can be easier if the cheaper product is given some additional defect that the price-sensitive customer will swallow and the price-blind customer will not.