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Inside Paylesss elaborate prank to dupe people into paying $600 for shoes
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post


Washington Post, November 30, 2018
Posted: December 10th, 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/30/they-had-...

A mini-runway, lined with stiletto heels, glistens in bright fluorescent lighting. Shoes of various types sit neatly in individual glass shelves. It was a private launch party of a new luxury brand of shoes called Palessi, designed by Italian designer Bruno Palessi. I would pay $400, $500. a woman said as she tried on a pair of bright-gold sneakers. The woman was not actually buying a Palessi because theres no such brand, and theres no Bruno Palessi. There is, however, Payless ShoeSource, a discount shoe retailer hoping to shake things up through an ... advertising prank to attract new customers and change the perception that the company sells cheap, unfashionable shoes. The prank also points to a reality about the human mind: Consumers are not capable of discerning the quality and value of the things they buy, said Philip Graves, a consumer behavior consultant. Slap a fancy-sounding European label on $30 shoes, and you have an illusion of status that people will pay an exorbitant amount of money for. On the day of the launch ... after attendees purchased overpriced shoes ― some for $200, $400 and $600 ― they were taken toward the backroom, where the prank was revealed. Youve got to be kidding me, said [one attendee], her eyes wide as she stared down at the overpriced shoes in her hands. Consumers have been paying hugely inflated prices, [said Graves]. Some of the pleasures that we get from things that we buy come from the money we spent on them.

Note: While this marketing prank demonstrated the public's willingness to ignore product quality in evaluating the cost of purchases, a much more serious study recently found that the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio has now reached 339 to 1 across US companies.


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