POTATO MARKET WEAKER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1058, 23 August 1930, Page 11

POTATO MARKET WEAKER

POSITION IN CANTERBURY Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, Friday. The potato section of tho market still remains the chief centre of interest this week. There has been a further slight easing from £2 10s a ton on trucks, reported on Wednesday. The value today is from £2 5s to £2 7s 6d a ton on trucks to growers, the lowest figure that has been known in August for very many years. Dakotas are no better, and sales were made today at £ 3 2s 6d, f.ob., s.i. The Wingatui. which loft from Lyttelton this week, took 2,7G0 sacks from Timaru and 3,780 sacks from Lyttelton, making a total of 6,540 sacks. The Waipiata is to load at Timaru early next week and at Lyttelton on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. Small seeds, oats and wheat show little animation. Millers are buying occasional lines of next season’s wheat at 5s 9d f.0.b.. or 5s 6d to 5s 7d on trucks, according to stations. Fowl wheat is firm at 6s 2d. f.0.b., s.i. LONDON MEAT MARKET The Bank of Xew Zealand has received the following advice from its London office as at the close of business this week: “Frozen Meat Market. —Wethers: Demand steady and better outlook. For ewes the market is quiet and unchanged. Lambs: The demand continues, but it is not quite so brisk. There is a weaker tendency. For beef there is a fair demand: Current quotations: Wethers, light, 4 5-8 d to 6Jd: heavy, 4d to 4Xd; ewes, 2§d to 3 3-Sd; lambs. twos, B?,d to 9d; eights, 8 3-8 d to 9d: fours, Sid to 82d; seconds, 7Jd to 7|d. Ox, hinds, 5d to sid; fores, 3d to 3Sd; cow hinds, 4d to 4id; fores, 23d to 3d. THE REASON WHY WHAT ADVERTISING DOES Branding or trade-marking goods, and then advertising this brand or trade-mark, makes the selling of them easy, and thus less expensive. It is much easier—and therefore cheaper—to sell a shopkeeper goods for which his customers come and ask him than to sell him goods which he will have to persuade them to take. He needs less persuasion. It is not necessary to send travellers to him so often, urging him to this trouble. .We may be quite sure that manufacturers of tea, cocoa, and soap—to name onlv grocers’ wares—do not spend large sums to advertise their brands unless they save larger sums that would have to be spent if these goods were not branded and not advertised. When there is talk of bad trade, and the voice of complaint is loud in the land, such complaint does not come from the makers of branded and advertised goods. This cannot be because branded goods are dearer, or poorer value. It is unthinkable that in all the multifarious trades wherein branded goods are being advertised, and their manufacturers are prospering, the public are being overcharged. The only conceivable explanation is that the brand on a purchased article is the consumer’s best safeguard. If branded goods were not better than the other kind, and if consumers had not learned, as they have, to bo sure of this, the brand would be, not an asset, but a hindrance to trade. THE PART OF THE PURCHASER

That brand-names and trade-marks may give their full service of protection to the buyer, it is incumbent upon him to play his part in turning them to account. Lawyers once invented a maxim: caveat emptor. jlhey said in their law-Latin. The meaning in honest every-day English is s “let the buyer take care”: let him look to himself, lest he be deceived. Advertised commodities relieve him of the need for this caveat if he will but see to it that he obtains them. The selfinterest of the manufacturer is a better protection for the consumer than his own vigilance in distinguishing the semblance of merit from its substance: and a purchaser untrained in recognising good quality may be deceived, for all his caveats, when there is no name or brand to protect him. But this shall avail him poorly unless he takes pains to call for his needs by name at the shopkeeper’s counter. He should not ask for plain soap, or cocoa or flannel, or oatmeal, but for the soap or cocoa of this maker, flannel or oatmeal with the name he knows, through what he has read in advertising, that he can bank on.