Have you noticed that even run-of-the-mill products and services are now expensive? Whether it’s a car or a concert ticket or even just a loaf of bread, regular items that were priced regularly just a few years ago are now being sold as luxuries.
It’s no accident, according Eemaan Khan, a Canadian expat working as a strategy director at ExecCap Advisors in Chicago. It’s the product of a lack of competition across sectors, which is allowing providers to get away with charging exorbitant prices on thoroughly mid products.
The concept is known as “premium mediocre,” coined by management consultant Venkatesh Rao in 2017, and refers to products, services and experiences that use marketing, aesthetics and false luxury to make average, everyday things premium.
Canada – and Canadians – are particularly ripe for it, Khan recently wrote on his Make Canada Think Harder newsletter, because of a conditioned aversion to risk and failure. It’s a feedback loop that prevents competition from happening, which in turn keeps pricing going up and acceptable standards on what we’re being sold going down.
He joins the Do Not Pass Go to discuss premium mediocre and how Canadians can shake their penchant for accepting middling results at high costs.
Check out Khan’s newsletter here.
