“HALF-PRICE WEEK

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3840, 30 November 1936, Page 3

“HALF-PRICE WEEK

IF DOCTORS ADVERTISED. An amusing picture of what might happen if the medical profession decided to hold an advertising campaign was drawn by Mr. A. Catesby at the summer school of the Drapers’ Chamber of Trade at Oxford (says the Manchester Guardian). Discussing the "professional attitude” towards work, he said: “Take a comparison with the standards which govern a profession. Practically everybody, not excluding Bernard Shaw, has had a really good crack at doctors, but we all fundamentally believe that they have a certain definite standard of conduct and a tradition of responsibility. “It is a little difficult to imagine, for instance, the president of the British Medical Association calling a conference and opening his speech in some such words as these: ‘Well, we all know that July is a very slack month, and for that reason we are proposing to hold a half-price appendix week.’ “Can you imagine a national advertising campaign. Large pictures on placards, with pretty nurses inviting you to have your appendix out, doctors with boards out in front of their surgeries stating ‘Appendix out for £l2 19s 6d. Cannot be repeated at the end of the month’? “That is the difference between a profession and a trade. Which way are we going to go? Are we going to get more or less professional? “You can clearly see that there is a gap to be bridged. There is a sign, however, that this gap is being bridged, and that possibly over the course of a long period the responsibilities of retailing may ultimately become similar to those of a profession.” Previously Mr. Catesby, comparing the retail trade of half a century ago with that of to-day, said “Fifty years ago there was not the need that there is now for the speedy adjustment of stock. You bought in the grand manner about twice a year; now you are buying nearly every minute. “Neither was there in those days all this frightful zest to cut your price one degree lower than your neighbour. “But the higher-class stores are something we are probably in danger of losing. They have a professional atmosphere towards their job that we have not quite got. “But does it really disturb the retailer of to-day when he sells a consumer a product (advertised or otherwise) whether it is really in the best interests of the consumer to buy that particular product? “Does the grocer really worry about the nutritive value of the food he sells? Does anybody who sells, say, pharmaceutical goods worry himself about the contents of the patent medicines he recommends?” Mr. Catesby said that historically retailing had passed rather swiftly through similar stages to the feudal baron, who acquired his land like Mussolini and became respectable afterwards, and the great manufacturers of the early nineteenth century. The history of these manufacturers did not bear inspection, but their sons became “county” and their grandsons became humane. “The commercial morality of retailing has moved in similar fashion, but with far greater speed,” he added. Referring to the manufacturer, Mr. Catesby said he regarded himself as very superior to the retailer. The effort of having to be polite to the retailer and to kowtow to him to get his business does not go down very well with him. “Moreover, he regards the goods which he personally makes as quite the very best of the kind that ever were made, and if you are not buying his goods but buying those of one of his competitors either you are a fool —which he probably thinks you are in any case—or the other chap is ‘getting at you.’ ”