If you want to understand marketing and branding and how people buy things and why they buy based on emotion and not cost, just think about ketchup.
I can't eat chips without ketchup; this must be from my youth.
I think it's called neophobia.
Neophobia is the avoidance of new tastes when you're a child, which is believed to be an evolutionary thing to stop you from eating berries that would kill you.
It's why kids like ketchup on stuff, because then things taste of ketchup, and then it's why kids like me still like ketchup on chips, because that's how they grew up.
There are different types of ketchup you can get the way.
Number one, the horrible, horrible, sweet, toxic bright red ketchup that comes in a fake tomato with a green stalk on it that you squeeze.
That's the worst ketchup, but sometimes in the best circumstances, it's the best.
It has no brand, and it has no logo, and you expect it to be free (or very, very cheap).
Number two, the second is a supermarket copy of Heinz ketchup in a glass bottle or a plastic bottle.
It's a reasonable substitute, but still not the best. If you can see the label and the label of both, you'll always pick Heinz (and in a blind taste test, you'll probably take the other one).
The third in the pyramid is Heinz, which is the OG and the best for many circumstances.
It's not the cheapest, though, not by a long way, but they've saturated the market now in different formats. Glass bottles (always the best), squeezy bottles (the customer always uses too much), sachets are everywhere; they've got it in Five Guys and other places like that on a pump dispenser; it's ubiquitous, and all ketchup is measured against Heinz.
Number four, second to top of the pyramid are ‘Kraft Ketchup’, you know the one. This is one that's produced in Cornwall with an old-fashioned label.
It's twice the price of Heinz and sells itself on different characteristics; maybe it's organic or free trade, or homemade or whatever, but it tastes better because there's a status associated with it, and because the ingredients are apparently (and probably) better.
The final one is the one that the pub makes itself, and there are several pubs around us that do this, and so they make their own ketchup, bottle it, use it with their meals and sell it as a separate product.
This is extraordinary because they can charge whatever they want for this one, because there's no reference point.
What you see above is what's called a market from the cheapest to the most expensive, with all the features and benefits listed.
Just to be clear, it's not about ketchup, is it? It's about stereos and beer and wine, and hamburgers, and dentistry.
They're all a market, and they're all purchased emotionally.
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