Beer Pricing - A Moral Responsibility?

I'd buy all of it. If it was a shop I really like, I might thank them for the low price and let them figure it out. Otherwise, I wouldn't say a thing. It's not a customers responsibility. I'm not going to feel bad about a store losing $30 over 1 case because of bad pricing... The Starbucks I go to sometimes won't charge me for my coffee. Am I to feel bad they are losing both potential profit and cost? No, I say thank you and move along...

 

This is all a matter of microeconomics, not macroeconomics, and I'm over a decade past any finals, but I think we're on the same page here, simply emphasizing different aspects of the issue at hand. I even repeated (and expanded on) your goodwill argument (before reading it) in a later post in this thread. I wrote that I considered this more of an economic issue than an ethical issue, so I wrote in the language of economics. While I know it doesn't for many people, this way of thinking comes naturally to me; there's no "overthinking" required. There are a lot of knee-jerk, emotional reactions to beer allocation issues on these boards, and I occasionally like to pepper in a little economic perspective.

 

It's not different to me. In both cases I see it as me walking out with a product I want, but with more money in my pocket than I should have. Whether it's a mistake in pricing or a mistake in giving change, I see it as the same, and I respond to it in the same fashion.

 

Person dropping the $5 is a good example. It was their mistake and I'm in a position where I can help. Works the same way with the KBS.

Whether it's moral or immoral is irrelevant, in my opinion. The better question is, how would you like for people in your community to behave?

 

It seems very odd to me that the scenario can only be explained by terms that indicate a small business owner simply doesn't know any better. I don't know what the original thread was, and based off the title I thought it was going to be something completely different, but I would find it impossible that the owner would not understand what they are doing.
If I was that curious, I would inquire about their shipment, how they obtained the beer, etc.

 

and sell it at a profit to enemies.

 

Nice! I would be temped as well, but Id most likely just buy a couple 4 packs and leave the rest. I might make a comment at checkout about damn what a sweet price you got there, I've seen it much higher at other places. Seeing as though I worked at a liquor store I will assume they know the price they paid and calculated the price accordingly.

 

I appreciate your view. But, to me, this is different than an individual cashier giving your more change than was warranted or a person on the street dropping a five-dollar bill. This is a business and the business made a choice to price the product at a certain value. To suggest that a consumer should alert the business (an entity that profits from selling products) that one of its products is priced below the market value is, in my view, absurd. I used this example in the local thread, but I think it drives home my point: should I be expected to alert a cashier as a local clothing store that they should raise their price on a sweater because I saw the same exact sweater at Bloomingdale's down the street at three times the price? Or should I be happy I found a product I like for less than most people will pay?

 

It's not different. Assuming it was an honest mistake (the person who set the price is human after all ... and to err is human etc.), the right thing to do is to point out the error and give the store the opportunity to correct it. Most likely you'll get the beer at the marked price anyway, but you're also doing your part to keep the store that bought the beer you want from losing money—which, in the long term, is in your best interests as well. If they decide to leave the price as-is for whatever reason, at least they've been notified.

Again, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. It's really pretty simple. Maybe not always easy, but simple.

 

There is one thing that I don't think has been addressed here enough that I think matters in this situation:

How obvious is it that the product is grossly underpriced?

In this particular case--a $10 four-pack of KBS--the mistake is glaringly obvious. Selling a new product at less than 50% of the typical retail cost is not likely to be a sale or loss leader or anything to that nature. In this situation, I would likely carry a 4-pack up to the register and once they actually quoted me the $10 price that had been on the shelf (making sure that it wasn't just a labeling error on the shelf), I would let them know that they were probably selling this for far less than they should be. I'd be even more eager to alert them of this fact if it was a small local business, and even moreso if I was a regular and/or somewhat familiar with the owner.

But let's make a hypothetical tweak to the question: say the 4-pack is being sold for $20. To me, it becomes a little trickier because it's less obvious that the price is a mistake. I suppose I could still say something, but when you're getting into a difference of $3-4, it seems a little obnoxious to pipe up with your opinion on the business' pricing. Of course, this begs the question: how much lower than the expected price does something have to be before it's obvious that it's a mistake--and a potentially harmful one to the business? And the answer, like so many ethically-charged questions surrounding consumer behavior, is that it depends. There isn't a hard and fast line. In general, the rule is "don't be a dick" or "do what you would like other people to do for you".

Case in point: there is a store in Kansas City selling 2013 Old Stock Cellar Reserve for $19. From what I can tell, this is lower than what many other stores have been charging for it, but not so much lower that it's an obvious mistake. I think case, I did not bother to inform the clerk because at a certain point, you're making assumptions about the price that you can't possibly have enough information to make accurately. Now, if those bottles had been priced at $10, I'd have probably mentioned something about it seeming much lower than what I'd seen elsewhere in the city and let them do with that information what they wanted. Believe it or not, that store still has several bottles of the Cellar Reserve Old Stock sitting around. I know it's no KBS, but I'm surprised it's still around at that price.

 

Usually a beer priced "ridiculously" high is priced so intentionally, and it's often an example of a retailer choosing a short-term producer surplus over long-term goodwill, which is a perfectly valid business decision that may or may not be more profitable than the alternative. If a store is selling a six-pack for, say, $89.99 that I would expect to see at $8.99 (i.e., very likely priced or labeled in error) then, yes, I likely will call it to the store's attention.

 

words to live by?

i love how everybody is all about "beer advocacy," whatever that means, but is still all, "fuck you, got mine" when shit like this get posted. these threads- and some of goddamn stupid responses- the OP was asking about morality, not fucking economics, you sperg-ass sociopaths- are what keep me from spending much time on this site.

 

This is a good point, and I think it goes to intent.

From what I've read on here (wouldn't know personally), KBS usually sells out in most places within 3 days. This is completely different from Old Stock Cellar Reserve, which is originally priced to sit on shelves for at least a year (I think I usually see it for ~$25 in my market, and this is for a 500mL bottle; it's good, but not that good—which is why it sits until it gets marked down to around $19.99). So in these two cases, it seems pretty freaking obvious that the KBS has been accidentally underpriced, and if the store was aware of the mistake they would immediately rectify the error. So in that case I think it's the right thing to do, if not a moral responsibility, to notify the store. (The question of morality as it relates to beer seems a little odd to begin with, so I don't really want to take it to that level. But yes, in a sense this is a moral issue and there is a clear right and wrong here.)

But yeah, at a certain point you're talking about a matter of degrees, and we'll clearly never all agree on the point at which you should do something vs. not.

 

Nope. I just don't buy it. So given the reverse situation, I would respond in a reverse manner.

 

In my view, buying a product for the price at which it is listed is different from accepting more change than is warranted from a cashier because the former is not dishonest and the latter is dishonest.

I certainly agree that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, but I just don't view this as a situation in which the consumer was acting in any way improper or immoral. The way I see it, businesses should be required to determine the correct price of a product and, if they don't, the consumer is entitled to buy the product at the listed price.

 

You win some and you lose some. Do you think the owner of the shop I (used to) visit every week gives a second thought to selling KBS for $40 a 4-pack and hoarding BCBS variants?

 

If someone is selling a product at a store I go to and that product is grossly underpriced, as this KBS seems to be, I'm most likely going to bring it to the attention of the store, whether the product is beer, clothes or whatever.

I see the marking of the beer so cheap as a mistake, no different than the cashier mistake. If it's not a mistake, then it is simply a lack of knowledge. If I wanted to profit off people's lack of knowledge I would form a Nickelback cover band. The world is complex and, I would imagine, running a business is very complex too. The bandwidth it must take up in your brain must be expansive. So if a shop owner is out of the loop on some piece of information and stands to have her/his business suffer as a result, I'm fine with dropping a little knowledge on them. Ultimately this is still a selfish act (and not because I'm hoping the owner will toss me a KBS for my kindness) but because, at the end of the day, it's to my benefit for that door to stay open and, more specifically, to continue to employ people in my community.

 

So even if you know (or are reasonably certain) the price was a mistake, you wouldn't do anything? This is where I find your position perplexing. In one case, a human being makes a mistake and drops a $5 bill or gives you the wrong change, and you would do something; but in another case, a human being makes a mistake and puts the wrong price on a product, and you wouldn't?

 

Amazing - this should win post of the year

 

Philosophy, not morality, seems to be what the thread is more about.

Would've made my college experience more enjoyable than reading Heidegger, adding beer social etiquette problems.