It turns out that "price-performance ratio" is a scam

All Chinese people are like Zhuge Liang, so smart that they are incredible.

The Chinese people have the blood of the hardworking ox flowing in their bodies, and they are insanely hardworking.

I don’t know from which day, a chemical reaction occurred between the old ox and Kong Ming, and the Chinese people became hardworking Kong Ming, who like to be smart in doing everything, especially when consuming.

Specifically, they learn about a product for three to five days or a month, and then spend the least amount of money to buy the most and best things to get the biggest bargain. A New Balance that is priced at 1,000 yuan must be bought for 500 yuan, and it must be free shipping, authentic, and have good reviews and cash back.

Thanks to the almighty Internet, he succeeded and enjoyed the supreme satisfaction of intelligence and the sense of superiority - the things you bought for a thousand yuan, I bought at half the price.

He forgot how much time and effort he spent to find this Taobao store, how much time and effort he spent to read and analyze the reviews of this Taobao store, and how much time and effort he spent to learn how to distinguish between Hong Kong version, US version, A-grade and B-grade products. These are all costs.

Of course, this is not a problem. Spending so much time and energy on making money may not earn you more than 500 yuan, but compared with the two, it is still a profit.

Unfortunately, he forgot one key point: the seller is also Chinese and smart: first, the seller is not a living Lei Feng, nor a candidate to move China, he just needs to make money; second, the seller's intelligence is not the result of three to five days or months of brainstorming, but the crystallization of wisdom extracted from a lot of time and practice of many peers. In other words, as a buyer, he is fighting against a large number of successful experiences that have been summarized and refined.

As a result, the New Balance shoes that cost one thousand dollars are still worn by "idiots" to climb ice and lie in the snow, and the Superior shoes that cost five hundred dollars have to be replaced.

In fact, it is not just New Balance. Nike, Adidas, Apple, Samsung, and almost everything he wants to buy can repeat the story of New Balance. The previous generation of iPhone is one-third lower than the official price. Estee Lauder must be 20% off... He succeeded repeatedly, but repeatedly suffered a lot of setbacks: iPhone is refurbished, and the famous Estee Lauder actually irritates the skin...

He finally understood that cheapness is actually a scam. Chasing cheapness does not necessarily mean that you are really getting a bargain. Buyers are never as smart as sellers. Change is necessary.

How to change? Throw away the cheap?

This won't do. Cheapness is a necessity with a gold content of 24K, how can you just give it up? Besides, I don't make much money and it's hard work, and I can't even achieve financial freedom in the supermarket. If I don't pay attention to everything, save money everywhere, and take advantage of everything, how can I enjoy a better life? It is the nature of the Chinese to pursue a better life. They want to live in a spacious house, eat well, dress well, and use things well.

He was confused.

At this time, cost-effectiveness comes into play.

Price/performance ratio, as the name implies, is the ratio of performance to price. You can tell the price at a glance, but you can only know the performance after comparing it. Originally, performance comparison is a tricky thing.

Taking smartphones as an example, there are too many things to compare, such as the CPU's main frequency, process, secondary cache, the screen's pixel arrangement, material, viewing angle, etc.

The diligence and intelligence of the idle Chinese people have a place to be used, and they stand up. After a week or two, or a month or two, he understands the CPU's main frequency, process, and secondary cache, the screen's pixel arrangement, material, and viewing angle, etc., and becomes a glorious half-baked person. A half-baked person can also expose many tricks. Comparing performance once is easier than twice, and three or four times will make it easy.

However, cost-effectiveness alone is not enough to convince people. Then another voice sounded in my ear: "What else does a product have besides performance? Isn't it that you buy things to use them? The most important thing is to enjoy the process. As for the brand, it is not important at all. A lot of advertising makes it a brand. There is only one reason why branded goods are expensive, that is, the advertising costs are included in the product."

His heart was immediately captured. The best performance equals the best enjoyment, and the best enjoyment is the best life. Enjoy the best life, but spend the least money. Good reviews! As for the brand, that's it!

Chinese people have never had a mature concept of brand. Most people think that brand means expensiveness and prestige, rather than a kind of trust, a trust that if I give you my money, you will sincerely satisfy me. It is a kind of life and lifestyle.

We also use brands and follow brands, whether it is pollen, rice noodles, or kerosene, but we don’t know what we really love.

Just like patriotism, we love it with all our heart, but we don’t actually know what we love about this country. The passionate heart is floating, unable to sink (Xiaomi is still good, it used to have a brand called Born for Enthusiasts, which was well-recognized and popularized, but now it’s gone. Meizu has the brand Home Silence, but it’s no longer mentioned. Huawei? Well, I know, Huawei uses its own heart). A heart that cannot sink is like a duckweed without roots, it is unreliable, and will be blown away by the wind.

As a half-baked person, he vigorously publicizes his own characteristics - he likes to bang and show off - and then, through his mouth and into his or her ears, a cheap image is established, and a sincere communication is completed, which is much more effective than advertising that costs a lot of money. I think advertising is not so precise. The half-baked person's evangelism targets either potential users or users who are about to become users.

He overlooked a fact: in addition to performance, there are many other things to consider, such as workmanship, design, service life, etc. Specifically, in smartphones, this is the ecosystem, that is, whether the ROM or OS is easy to use, whether the after-sales service can provide as many products as you want, and so on.

These are not as visible and tangible as performance, but they are a sacred and inseparable part of a smartphone, and in some ways, even more important than performance. Performance can ensure that you can watch smooth HD videos and play the latest games, but it cannot guarantee that the phone will not get hot, that the after-sales service and service hotline will not pass the buck after an accident, that the display quality under the sun will not be guaranteed, that the photo quality will not be guaranteed, and that you will not have any problems after using it for seven days.

A few days or dozens of days later, a feeling of déjà vu flashed through his mind.

He thought hard, and then suddenly realized that it was the feeling brought by the "cheap" back then. Looking at the price-performance ratio, it is not that high. In fact, it is to integrate the parts that consumers can feel most easily and convey them to users in the clearest way, so that users can understand and feel it, and make users feel that it is a good deal.

It is actually the "cheap" mentioned above, but it has changed its appearance and is more concealed. In other words, it has taken over the "cheap" job, and the "cheap" has been passed on. It still makes tricks in the parts that you can't see, understand, or know.

Therefore, domestic mobile phones always have a slightly worse grip, are always a little uglier in appearance, or are simply the twin brothers of iPhones, and after-sales service can repair as few of them as possible. The end result is that he feels like he has seen it before.

It turns out that cost-effectiveness, like “cheap”, is a scam.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.