Name Inflation - Professional, Premium, and Platinum, oh my!
Good Experience Blog recently pointed out the problem of name inflation causing confusion in the consumer - and rightly so. Complaints in the post include olive oil types ("pure," "virgin," and "extra virgin"), credit ratings (AAA, AA, and A being the worst), and eggs ("large" or "jumbo"). It seems to me that an even bigger problem is with more complex products, where huge combinations of features comprise the differences between versions, and the names do nothing to help the consumer figure out what those differences are. For example, for credit cards, services, software, or memberships of any kind, can you put the following levels in order from top-of-the-line to least expensive? Ahem: Platinum, Diamond, Premium, Select, Plus, Ultimate, Professional, Premiere, Executive. Anyone? Including anyone who sells anything with versions by those names? Let me know...
6 comments:
I know this one's a bit niche, but there is overuse of the name inflation concept in, of all things, guitar fret wire. A lot of guitars are advertised as having "super-jumbo" (???) or "medium-jumbo" (?!?!?!?!?) frets. I don't know what this means.
(It also took me a while to figure out what "wide-fat," "narrow-fat," "wide-thin" and "narrow-thin" necks. Turns out the first term, before the hyphen, refers to one dimension, the width of the fretboard, and the one afterward refers to, obviously, how thick the neck is.)
Good one, Mystery Commenter! "Medium-Jumbo" reminds me of one of the classic oxymorons, "Jumbo Shrimp." And it seems similar to the size inflation that's happened at fast food joints and concession stands, where the small size is medium, the medium size is large, and the large size is Gargantuan or some nonsense...
And of course there's Starbucks. A small is a "Tall," a medium is a "Grande," and a large is a "Venti." Not to mention that "Tall" is really short, about half a small cup of coffee.
I am the same mystery commenter that put the thing about the guitar frets.
More about guitars: the credit ratings remind me of the grade of the maple tops that some guitars have, which start at A (being just okay) all the way up to AAAAA!
More about guitars: the credit ratings remind me of the grade of the maple tops that some guitars have, which start at A (being just okay) all the way up to AAAAA!
You've got a knack for these things, Mystery Commenter! Keep'em coming... :-)
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