Privacy, a Commodity

Everybody’s public unless you buy your privacy.

Photo from stock.xchng

I looked for opportunities to sell my phone online. eBay and Craigslist are good options but I did my research to know if there’s another way to sell it faster. After that, the ads in the webpages I visit are by gazelle.com, a website that buys gadgets. This happens to you as well.  Our activities online were tracked and the ads we see are customized according to our interests.

It’s not only online where we are scouted. Go to a store and see yourself in the monitor as you move in the CCTV camera. Travel abroad and they’ll require your photo for the immigration. Apply for jobs, sign up for a service, download anything – almost in everywhere you’ll have records of what you did and where you’ve been.

Researchers from the German Institute for Economic Research and the University of Cambridge investigated whether people will pay more money for privacy. People are willing to give their phone numbers when buying movie tickets as long as they’re paying less.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers countered this study. Their results show that people will pay 60 cents more for a $15 item to protect their privacy.

Products like Evernote, a terrific notes software, will ask you to buy premium just to get rid of Ads. If you’re poor, you wouldn’t pay for premium. You’ll stick with free and get used to the parties tracking your activities for relevant ads posting. If you can afford, you can buy and disappear just like that.

In this time where privacy was becoming a luxury commodity, are you willing to pay for it?

Sources:
What Would You Pay for Privacy?; The New York Times
Study: Shoppers will pay for privacy; CNet

The Undue Expense of Shoes – Nike, Skechers, etc.

Cheap on labor, excessive on endorsement.

Photo from Justin Hee’s flickr

An elegant, dandy pair of Nike shoes would cost you around $70 to $150. Little did the public know that the production cost, meaning the materials, machinery, and rent that Nike spend in making a pair of shoe, is just $12. More intriguingly, the labor was just $2.75, or just 4% of the money the customers pay for a shoe with a check sign.

Workers in the production factory really earn a little percentage, and quite frankly are underpaid.

Most of the cost of the shoes came from advertisements. Tiger Woods, for instance, was paid $20 Million to promote the Nike golf division alone. In 2006, Nike spent $476 Million to get star-studded promotion of their shoes.

This engagement does not only apply to Nike. Before buying the Shape Ups Skechers shoes Kim Kardashian promotes, think of how much the noted Kardashian milks you some money. Just think of the workers who actually WORK and put together the materials to offer comfort for your feet and how they should get the percentage more. And think of how many hungry people will be fed, out of out-of-school children be educated, and millions of lives be improved when these shoe-makers’ cost of advertisement are focused on providing support for them.

Do they really need advertisements? People already know that Nike makes shoes, so why spend millions on promoting it more? We only have a pair of feet. Everytime we buy more than necessary, remember the children who travel to school using worn-out slippers or barefoot across rocky terraces and cross a river, even rivers.

Do you need a celebrity do endorse your shoes?

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Sources:
The Cost of a Pair of Nike Shoes; citinv.it
Investors Fret About Nike’s Star Endorsements; MSN Money