I’m sick of hearing this phrase “competitive” thrown around when someone is trying to sell me their goods or services. So many sales pitches come down to the ambiguous description of a product being”competitive”. But what does this actually mean? Competitive compared to what? And who decided that the overall price of a specific product was competitive in the first place? What about the current gas prices? Are those competitive too? I thought the word competitive was derived from the word “competition”, which doesn’t necessarily guarantee fairness at all. Obviously the entity making the most profit decides on what is “competitive” and what is not.
This does not only stop on the commerce level. I see this same lingo being used on many job postings online as well. Instead of being transparent about the salary range a company is willing to pay for a position, the HR department throws out a description reading, “Competitive Salary”, as if this means anything at all.
Hopefully they will do us a favor and provide comparisons when trying to entice us with this line. That way, we might have an idea of what competitive scale is being described. Not everyone is as naive as the sales force thinks they are, and most of us are savvy enough to see through semantics like this. It is only a matter of time that these knuckleheads start backing up their big talk with some real numbers.
I have personally found that when businesses are more forthcoming with their services or the reasons for their prices, I’m much more likely to trust them and become a frequent customer.
This is a flashback of those used-car salesmen back in the 90’s who used to quickly talk over the customer when they pointed out noticeable defaults in the vehicle. “Oh don’t worry about it…because it is competitive pricing“.
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