Cheap : The High Cost of Discount Culture (Hardcover)

from rivkat

All my nonfiction recently seems to be about This Mess We're In in varying ways. This book is loosely organized around the concept of low price, starting with the cognitive challenges it presents: we mistakenly think that discounts from originally high prices are somehow better than beginning wit...

from folini

This book is made of two different parts. The first part analyses low prices from the psychological, cognitive point of view. Why we are attracted by low prices, how we react, and so on. The second part analyses the reason for cheap prices, the implications and the costs. The two parts are loosel...

from Othemts

Cheap is an intriguing expose on the modern American desire for bargains fed by discount stores and discount ideology in more areas of commerce than one would realize. Ruppel Shell offers a fascinating history of discount stores from the late 19th-century to present. Interestingly, many of the or...

from Devil_llama

This is a well written, timely book that takes a look at the American obsession with low prices, and the impact that has had on our culture, on the environment, and on the global community. Well researched, and with enough humor and personal stories to make it easy reading, in spite of the number...

from TomSlee

Discount culture is not a product of warped consumer psychology or of elaborate neuro-scientific investigations. Shell misdiagnoses the cause of discount culture, and so cannot give a useful prognosis for a cure. And it is remorselessly American in a very parochial way.