Cornering your customer

The genuine article

What is real and what is fake and how much does it matter? There are two sides to the coin of the con. On the one side there are those selling what they purport to be the genuine real thing and do so at a premium. On the other side there are those living off the backs of the creative and providing a similar item for a significant discount in relation to the ‘real’ thing. There is a thing called provenance where something is supposedly worth more, not because it has any superior qualities but because it has been owned by someone well known in the past. People are paying for abstract thin air, but it keeps them very happy and provides reassurance that they will be able to sell it on again to some other mug at a later date if so desired.

Deception is everywhere. If you have a swanky set of clothes, a flash car and showy jewellery you may be either trying to obtain money for a business venture or you are trying to lure someone to lie on their back for a lay. You are hoping that by portraying yourself as smart, assured, and secure can nail the deal or demonstrate your marriage potential whatever the case may be. It doesn’t make one jot of difference if the clothes are from the local market, the car on hire and the necklace is plated, the illusion works if you get what you want. Underdogs are loud. They need to be to have a chance.

It becomes a bit of a joke if you need to go to a specialist or use a microscope to authenticate an item. It is a lot of hassle to tell everyone you see as you walk down a street that the bag on your arm is genuine and not a well-made copy. If an aircraft part is passed off with a dodgy certificate of conformity and fails in flight or somebody dies having taken counterfeit medicines, the culprits are culpable for an invidious malfeasance. However, when an item does the exact same job, but is priced without the premium and without any theft of intellectual property we all gain by fair competition. Charging extra because you want people to buy into a superficial brand is as big a con as making money from emulating something at a lower price. Another marketing ploy is to create officialdom, official vendors, to make us believe that all else is unworthy. It is a clever form of branding and used to seduce us to pay over the odds for things.