【英语生活】烟盒上有产品阴谋

I notice that my tobacco packet includes merely a helpline number for people who want to quit, and not a grotesque picture of someone in the advanced stages of a smoking-related disease. This leads me to conclude that I might be prepared to pay more for my tobacco if its legally required guilt trips were in text form rather than pictures. Am I on to something?
Ms Lovegrove, Oxford

Dear Ms Lovegrove,

I think you just might be. The pictures you describe are a form of “product sabotage”, a tactic used by companies with some pricing power. Some customers are very sensitive to price while others pay less attention to it. The sensible business, then, will try to separate the two groups and charge them different prices for similar products. This can be easier if the cheaper product is given some additional defect that the price-sensitive customer will swallow and the price-blind customer will not.

Examples abound. Tesco Value products are cheap, but the packaging reminds me of an emergency food drop from the United Nations. The “short cappuccino” from Starbucks is cheap – and not advertised on the menu. Most software packages have a cheaper version in which features are disabled at the vendor's expense. Some hardware does, too.

The government could allow the sale of tobacco under two different conditions: the current version, with tax and disturbing pictures, and a “guilt-free” version with no pictures but a higher tax. The effect would be something to test, but I would expect school children and the poor to choose the traditional version, while older and more affluent smokers would buy the premium version. I would guess that with two different schemes available, the government should be able to discourage more smokers while also raising extra cash.

我发现，我的烟盒上只有为那些想戒烟的人准备的热线电话号码，而没有吸烟相关疾病晚期患者的怪诞图片。这让我想到，如果我想购买以文本——而非图片——形式表现法律所要求、让人产生负罪感的香烟，或许得多花钱。我说的对吗？

洛夫格罗夫(Lovegrove)女士，牛津

亲爱的洛夫格罗夫女士：

我认为或许你是对的。你形容的图片是一种“产品阴谋”——拥有某种定价权的企业使用的策略。一些顾客对价格非常敏感，而另一些人则不太看重价格。因此，聪明的企业会试图将这两个团体分开，为类似的产品制定不同的价格。如果让较为廉价的产品具有某些额外缺陷，就会更容易做到这一点——价格敏感的顾客将会忽略，而不太注重价格的顾客则不会忽视这些缺陷。

这样的例子不胜枚举。乐购超值(Tesco Value)的东西比较便宜，但包装让人想到联合国发放的救济食品。星巴克(Starbucks)的“小杯卡布奇诺咖啡”很便宜，但却不在餐牌上。大多数软件都有更廉价的包装， 这种包装并不精美，由卖方承担费用，一些硬件也是如此。

政府可能允许企业以两种不同的模式销售香烟：当前模式——税赋和烦人的图片，以及“不会产生负罪感”的模式——没有图片，但税赋更高。其效果有待检验。但我预计学生和穷人会选择传统模式销售的香烟，而年纪大一些和更有钱的吸烟者，则会购买那些价格更高的香烟。我估计，通过这两种不同的模式，政府应该能够劝阻更多的人吸烟，同时还能获得额外收入。

译者/君悦