“YOU CAN BANK ON ADVERTISED GOODS."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19154, 21 August 1930, Page 11

“YOU CAN BANK ON ADVERTISED GOODS."

MAKE BEST SAFEGUARD FOR THE CONSUMERS.

Branding or trade-marking goods and then advertising this brand or trademark, makes the selling of them easy, and thus less expensive (says a commercial authority). It is much easier * —and therefore cheaper—to sell a shopkeeper goods for which his customers come and ask him than to sell him goods which he will have to persuade them to take. He needs less persuasion. It is not necessary to send travellers to him so often, urging him to this trouble. We may be quite sure that manufacturers of tea, cocoa, and soap —to name only grocers' wares—do not spend large sums to advertise their brands unless they save larger sums that would have to be spent ii these goods were branded and not advertised. When there is talk of bad trade, and the voice of complaint is loud in il.e land, such complaint does not come from the makers of branded and advertised goods. This cannot be because branded goods are dearer, or poorer value. It is unthinkable that in all the multifarious trades wherein branded goods arc being advertised, and their manufacturers are prospering, the public are being overcharged. The only conceivable explanation is that the brand on a purchased article is the consumer's best safeguard. If j branded goods were not better than ! the other kind, and if consumers had ! not learned, as they have, to be sur* ■ of this, the brand would be, not a 1 | asset, but a hindrance to trade. The Part of tne Purchase', j That brand-names and trade-marks J may give their full service of pro»ocI ticn to the buyer, it is incumbent | upon him to play his part in turning | them to account. Lawyers once in- | vented a maxim: caveat emptor, they said in their law-Latin. The meaning in honest everyday English is, “let the buyer take care”: let him look to himself, lest he be clecyvcd. Advertised commodities relieve him of tb: need for this caveat if he will but see to it that he obtain; them. The selfinterest of the roahtficturer is a better protection tor the consumer than his own vigilance in distinguishing thr semblance of merit from its substance: ! and a purchaser untrained in recog- | nising good quality may be deceived, for all his caveats, when there is no name or brand to protect him. But this shall avail him poorly unless he takes pains to call for his needs by name at the shopkeeper’s counter. He should not ask for plain soap, or cocoa, or flannel, or oatmeal, but for the soap or cocoa of this maker, flannel or oatmeal with the name he knows, through what lie has read in advertising, that he can bank on.