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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 20th, 2023

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  • I mean, it’s not really a false dichotomy though? Your statements suggest that we assign fault/root cause to the consumer. I’m suggesting we assign root cause to the manufacturer/lack of regulation. If at the end of the day, it’s the consumer’s fault they chose a product without conducting a comprehensive quality review of all components within the product they purchase, then the action of pushing government regulation contradicts that. Funding regulation doesn’t do anything to fix consumer behavior; i.e. root cause. But maybe I misinterpreted your statements.

    As for your first statement, there are many problems with this reasoning. How can we reasonably expect consumers to perform comprehensive research studies on everything they purchase? If it turned out the specific manufacturer of Grade B wool that’s used for a certain sweater from a certain clothing brand is known for causing latent forms of cancer if worn for 2 years, that’s really on the consumer? C’mon now.

    Besides, in this specific case, it turned out to be a catastrophic latent failure. It wasn’t even possible for an informed consumer to have predicted this sort of catastrophic failure.







  • I mean you’re not wrong in a sense. Their marketing campaign centered around targeting a specific demographic (high income insecure millennials)…those that would spend a lot of money to get their own exercise equipment than go to the gym with other people around.

    Now there’s nothing wrong with that (with wanting your own exercise equipment, at least). I just wish people realized other gym goers don’t give a shit about you. I literally don’t remember anything about anyone after the gym (like “wow that dude was so fat”).

    But alas, here we have our lovely corporate propagan-….I mean “Public Relations”…manufacturing insecurity in the mind of the consumer.

    As much as I dislike Planet Fitness’s predatory business model, I do gotta say they used this “gym insecurity” manufacturing from other PR firms to their advantage. “We know you’re insecure about going to the gym. Here’s a gym for the regular joe. Super cheap and the gym won’t have those judgmental gym goes (who never existed in the first place) that other gyms have. It’s only $10 a month! Yeah, we make it so you literally need to give us your left kidney in order to cancel your subscription, and yeah 90% of our revenue comes from people who never actually use the gyms, but hey, if you’re one of the 10%, then that’s even better since the 90% basically pay for your membership, new equipment, clean gym, amenities, AND the gyms won’t be crowded!”

    So yeah…predatory as fuck…but at least their PR campaign centered around taking advantage of a manufactured insecurity rather than adding to it? Or maybe by perpetuating this myth that there really do exist a bunch of toxic gym goers at other gyms isn’t really helping…I’m not so sure now haha.