Knowledge And Decisions

Examples abound. In a famous antitrust case involving Clorox, the Supreme Court said that “all liquid bleach is identical.”⁶⁸ But the factual finding in the very same case was that “Clorox employed superior quality controls” and that some brands of liquid bleach “varied in strength” from one to another⁶⁹ — a fact of no small importance to users considering how much is enough and how much will ruin their clothes. It may well be that there are other brands of liquid bleach absolutely identical to Clorox but the knowledge of which ones they are is not a free good, and whether the uncertainty of a variation is worth the price difference is not a question that must be settled once and for all by third party observers, since consumers find various brands sitting side by side on supermarket shelves. In another well-known antitrust case, competing pies were considered by the Supreme Court as being “of like grade and quality” despite one pie company’s “unwillingness to install quality control equipment,” to meet the competition of its more successful rival.⁷⁰ Undoubtedly a photograph taken with a press camera produced by the Graflex Corporation, which dominated that market, would have been wholly indistinguishable from a photograph taken with any number of other cheaper press cameras, as of the date both were purchased brand new. However, since its cameras were usually purchased by professional photographers, and especially by the photographic departments of newspapers, the strong preference for Graflex press cameras could not be attributed to technical ignorance, “irrationality” or the caprice or psychological susceptibilities of uninformed consumers. Experience had simply established the ruggedness of this particular brand of press camera in the rough usage to which it was subjected in crowds, on sports fields, and in war time combat situations.

Sometimes the difference in consumer preference as between products is not due to the characteristics of the products so much as it is due to differences in the cost of knowing of other products’ characteristics. Photographic experts have determined that a number of films manufactured by Ilford, Inc. produce results virtually indistinguishable from those produced by films manufactured by Eastman Kodak, which dominates that market. That is, a photographic technician equally familiar with the processing of both brands of film, can produce the same end results from either. Nor are the Ilford processing requirements any more difficult than those of Kodak. They are simply not as well known, just as the characteristics of Ilford film are not as well known. Nor are all brands comparable to these two. Even the singling out of Ilford as one brand among many others that is comparable to Kodak requires a prior knowledge and sorting of little-known brands. Note that what is involved here is not “taking advantage” of consumers’ ignorance. A professional photographer, well aware of the similarity, may nevertheless continue to purchase the one familiar brand rather than exert himself to stock or refer to two different sets of developing data. There is also much to be gained by using one brand to (1) free one’s picture taking attention for aesthetic concerns rather than technical considerations, and (2) be able to buy new film identical to the old wherever one happens to be on assignment, which is to say, not having to worry because one company’s dealer outlets are not as numerous as another’s.