Random Reflections On: Reassuringly Expensive

I think it was around the time when I installed RedHat 7.3 (the first Linux I really used, albeit rather briefly) that I first ran across the comparison between Linux Distributions and Tomato Ketchup. The reasoning ran, roughly, as follows:

1. everyone can make Tomato Ketchup, there are a number of recipes available, and they use ingredients that are easy enough to get hold off
2. most people still buy ready made Tomato Ketchup
3. this is not because they couldn’t make it themselves, but because they can’t be bothered to make it themselves (it takes a lot of time, and the shop bought ones are more than adequate
4. similarly everyone could make their own Linux based system from scratch (this is indeed what Linux From Scratch exists for), but few people want to maintain such a system
5. hence distributions are a perfect way to get Linux to people, and money can be made from making something people could get for free

This line of reasoning is not in fact what this post is set to explore, but I thought it worth dragging up because there are going to be some close parallels in here, unless I’m much mistaken. In fact I’m going to look at this from pretty much the opposite point of view. The above was to explain why it’s possible to make money with free software. What I intend to look at is why costing money is sometimes at advantage.

This is what brings me to Tomato Purée and the phrase “reassuringly expensive”. (If one were to run “reassuringly expensive” through Google it would probably turn up more beer than Tomato Purée, but we’ll get to that in due course.) Like many musings that involve puréed tomatoes this one started with a tin of the stuff in a supermarket. In fact it started with two tins, the one I bought, and the one I decided not to buy.

The tin I didn’t buy was the smaller of the two. It only held 40% (50% at the very most) as much purée as the other tin. It was also, however, over 4 times cheaper, costing exactly 7 cents as opposed to 29 cents for the tin I bought. Mathematically the most obvious thing to do would be to buy two of the smaller tins. But that’s when reassuringly expensive struck.

Because, bizarre though it may seem at first glance, expense can indeed be reassuring. On tends to reason, in essence, that something wouldn’t be more expensive if it weren’t worth more. Or, coming at it from the other side, if it’s too cheap there must be something wrong with it.

To get back to the tomato purée, taking into account the cost of putting it in little tins and transporting it one can’t help but wonder how, at 7 cents for even a small tin, they found the budget to buy any tomatoes.

This “if it’s expensive it must be worth more” line of thought was perhaps most famously exploited by Stella Artois, a Belgian beer, in its UK advertising. While the slogan was dropped amid image problems in 2007 it managed for some time to give Stella Artois an image of quality in the UK, even though the beer was seen as perfectly ordinary in its native Belgium.

Another (tongue in cheek) illustration of the principle can be found in the British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister. In one episode Sir Humphrey Appleby (the cabinet secretary) tries to convince prime minister James Hacker to buy new nuclear weapons by pointing out “This is the nuclear missile that Harrods would sell you.” When Hacker counters that “We don’t need it and it costs billions.” Humprey argues that “You can say that about anything you buy at Harrods.”¹

All of which brings me back to the point of software which, several lifetimes ago or so it seems, was what sparked this whole thing. I’ve often though the idea of people picking software because it is expensive silly in the past, but the tomato purée has got me thinking. I pick my software based on:

1. how good it is at what it does
2. the philosophy behind it (I do prefer open source where possible) and
3. the cost (lower is better)

But when someone has no idea how to go about judging the performance quality of software – much the same way I don’t have a clue how to judge the quality of tomato purée (other than in a limited way by tasting it) – I’m beginning to see where they might think “reassuringly expensive” is just the ticket. All of which of course only serves to point out the real problem: the people who are ultimately responsible for buying software often don’t have a clue about judging software.²
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¹ Some of this dialogue is paraphrased, I couldn’t be bothered to look up the exact quotes.
² IT departments usually know this, but more often than not they can only advice and financial/management people have the last word.