Federal regulation requires a panel on packaged food giving serving size, calories, and specified nutrients, in a set order and a set format. Every manufacturer must publish the same categories, including the unflattering ones, on the package itself.
retail
Home improvement
Home Depot and Lowe’s are among the largest retailers in the United States, and both are built on the premise that homeowners will do the work themselves — electrical, plumbing, structural. American building codes generally permit a homeowner to do work on their own dwelling that would require a licensed trade elsewhere.
The price is right
The German title of the television show known in English as The Price Is Right, in which contestants guess the retail price of consumer goods. The premise only works if prices are knowable — if there is a right answer to guess. The show is built on the assumption that every item has one correct price.
Greed is great
Greed is great — an advertising slogan run by the electronics chain Saturn from 2002, shortly after the discount laws were repealed. It became one of the most argued-about slogans in German advertising history, blamed in public debate for a coarsening of commercial culture. The company eventually dropped it.
A campaign celebrating the pursuit of low prices caused a national argument about what the country had become.
What costs nothing is worth nothing
What costs nothing is worth nothing. Said in German about free advice, free offers and heavy discounts. It reverses the usual direction of suspicion. The doubt attaches not to the expensive thing but to the cheap one.
The star rating
American commerce runs on aggregated customer ratings, displayed next to the price on every listing. Quality is expressed as an average of opinions, alongside the number that would buy it.
The master’s business
Meisterbetrieb. German craft firms display the designation on the van, the shopfront and the invoice. It is not a claim about the work. It is a statement about who is permitted to do it.
Worth its price
Worth its price. The German word for something that is good value, and it is built from Preis and wert. Not cheap. Not a bargain. Worth what it costs, which is a different and higher claim.
Good, better, best
The standard American merchandising structure: three versions of the same product at three prices, displayed together. The buyer is not asked whether the thing is good. They are asked how much quality they want to buy.
Shop around
Shop around. Get three quotes. Don’t take the first offer. Let them compete for your business. Standard American advice, given to consumers and to procurement departments alike, and all of it assumes the number will move.