Originally Posted By: fdcg27
...while name brand oils are frequently offered with promotional deals.
Wouldn't you agree that promotions are a form of advertising and
all advertising, regardless of amount, costs companies real money? For any business that's planning to be around in the near future, that cost absolutely gets baked into the sales price. Therefore, unless one is
always and every time buying an advertised product with a rebate or on clearance, then a portion of the sales price they're paying is going toward one or more forms of advertising,
even if advertising wasn't at all responsible for driving them to that particular purchase decision. This means that every cent (or percentage) that's allocated toward recouping advertising costs is one less cent that's available to be allocated toward other product elements like research, design, development, production, quality, testing, etc. Obviously, I'm oversimplifying this here because I'm omitting other intermediaries between manufacturer and buyer/consumer, but I hope the point is sufficiently clear.
I believe this often happens: someone hasn't ever used product X, but then buys product X on rebate and then determines, usually subconsciously, that they sufficiently like it; then, more often than not, they're more inclined to buy product X at some future point,
even when it's not on rebate.
Even drug dealers operate on this principle (i.e. the first few hits are always free or super-cheap). Advertising is evil.