Espresso: Rory Sutherland & Oisín Rogers - Why is Waitrose Posher Than Tesco?

0:01What makes Waitrose fosher than Tesco? to some extent is not what they sell it's what they don't sell or what isn't prominent on the shelves okay so one of the things that always amuses me by local waitrose is going around looking for pork scratchings okay a totally delicious but not very fashionable food until recently and it's always right on the bottom shelf and you don't have if you go to waitrose you don't have three yards of pop tarts okay and so a large part of the curation of waitrose is actually the hiding or absence of naff foods rather than the presence of posh foods yes interesting um you know why why else does waitrose make you feel like you're having a posh shop rather than tesco's where you might not always feel that why is it and i'll i'll i'll tell you it's all about what you feel and it's all about the senses yeah it is and it's about symmetries and it's about the width of the aisles and it's about the color and it's about the lighting that's about what you smell and what you feel and what you would taste if you go to the cheese counter.

1:06And those little things all add up to an esoteric feeling of, yes, this has a higher value. So it's very interesting about that because I had a colleague who worked on the Marks & Spencer's account for ages. What he wanted to say, he never had the balls to do it, and I don't blame him. But he always wanted to say to Marks & Spencer, look, I'm not going to work on any advertising for you at all until you sort out your flooring and lighting in your clothing department yeah because marks and spencers obviously have some sort of procurement which does the flooring and the lighting for food and for clothing in the same way i totally agree and i know exactly what you mean it feels like being in a dentist's chair and i'm kind of going you can't charge you know you can't get someone to spend 250 quid on clothes and shoes yeah if you have basically industrial lighting and a bloody easy clean floor totally agree and it's a perfect example of a silent irritant yeah interesting isn't it yeah it doesn't feel like a premium experience there despite the fact that the clothes are often excellent they're very you know very well priced it's one of those weird you know i always made a joke about the weird rule which is in clothing retail if you spend 100 quid or more they have to give you a rope handle bag it makes no sense it's just one of those kind of you know if you spent 200 quid and you get a polythene bag, something feels wrong.

2:24Absolutely. Fundamentally. I want to go back into the five cents. One extra point. I think in any form of capitalist exchange, there's a necessary level of bullshit for any level of expenditure. So that it feels... What I'm saying is that to buy a car online is a perfectly rational thing to do. Yeah. OK? But it feels wrong. If I'm going to spend a five-figure sum on a car, I just want someone to just do a little bit of, and by the way, this is the glove compartment. Likewise with estate, why are estate agents posh? Because if you're going to spend a six-finger sum, you kind of want someone a bit posh just to make a bit of a fuss of you.

3:08Because it's just a level of bullshit that seems commensurate with the amount you're spending. And the experience of the transaction is something that you want to be able to memorise and tell people about.