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Gimmicks: turning normal product into bigger profit... Palmolive concentrated dish washing liquid (soap) has been on the market since I was a . Maybe you remember Madge, the manicurist who offered advice to her customers to soften their hands from roughness doing dishes. "Mild? you're soaking in it" and the customer would (fearfully) pull her hand from the soaking dish while Madge tapped their hand offering assurance the product was good. What a marketing psychology! Oh... the millions of women who fell for that tactic. OK, a bottle of Palmolive is around $3 - $4 nowadays depending on the size, store or promotion going on because some offer 25% more product free. That's what it cost, that's what it sells for. You make lots of product, sell it for a price and the story ends. Dial soap has a product with a foaming pump dispenser 7.5 ounce bottle for about the same price as a big bottle of Palmolive. A friend of mine tried it. When the Dial soap ran out, I filled it with Palmolive. But... it didn't work at first. Palmolive is concentrated. Dial foaming soap isn't. Ohhh.... this is not new to me. The kitchen soap pumps cannot work with concentrated liquid soap. You have to dilute the soap for them to work properly. I've got this worked down to a science now... You only need 1 ounce of Palmolive soap and 6.5 ounces of tap water to fill the dial pump bottle and achieve the same kind of foaming soap. That's costing me roughly 20 cents per refill and 2 minutes of my time. I've got plenty of pump bottles now as my friend doesn't want to be bothered refilling pump bottles of soap. I have one in the lavatory and one in each vanity at work. The company I'm working for bought concentrated antibacterial hand soap that has a strong chemical scent. I dislike it and supply my own. My coworkers seem to like my soap more than what's supplied by management. I've been doing this for 2 or 3 years now... is it worth it? Of course it is. The thought goes through my head that Dial has a really good money making gimmick. I'm sure you have to factor in the cost of the pump bottle. Home Depot sells 20 ounce spray bottles for $1 so the cost cannot be so great that it's not money making. I feel so guilty for exposing this scheme... 
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Remember, before mass marketing and media commercialism, people always found ways to do things. I think what we sometimes forget is - we pay for convenience more than substance. You don't mind a little work, so you still use your creative ability. many people don't want to use their ability, they just want to pay for something ready made. We ( as a society of people) simply don't have the attention span to invest in thinking and doing anymore. I think many don't know that most of these kind of products were once made at home, long before the Supermarkets came into existence. My primary youth was in a small country town, we raised our vegetables, we had chickens, pigs and such, the older people could make anything they wanted. The men were handy at fixing anything they needed to utilize or they could devise a means to get something done. I don't ever remember any kind of repairman coming to our house up to the age of 12 or 13 or so. anything that needed fixing there was a man in the community that could do it. The women made better ice cream than you could buy in the store. and I doubt I've ever tasted a cake that was bought from a business, that was even close to the cakes made at home. I had cousins who lived in areas that did not have gas, electricity or running water, everything was manual, I loved going to their house during the summer and sometimes on weekends. So yes, you can be thankful you grew up in an era that you learned to work, use your mind and be creative. I use to think it was a dis-advantage growing up in the country town when I measured it against city life, but city life is dependent on everything commercial... and if it is not commercially available or a publicly provided service like utilities, many city people are not only lost but furious. Strange thing in life, is we often don't know when we have it good. Now days living in suburbia we are dependent on the commercial system for everything. The economy has made many people go back to thinking and being creative, in some cases it has made many re-think about what they waste. The economy just has not got bad enough YET to make men and women build strong relationships that are not controlled by commercialism and the material things advertised. Here's a funny one... Add up the cost now for "Paid TV", Cell Phone, Internet and look at combined cost on a monthly average; It is more than it use to cost to make a house payment. In some cases the cost is more than it use to cost to make a combined car and a house payment monthly. The other one that trips me out, is the exaggerated cost of clothes with designer labels. I go to Burlington or some of the discounters and get the same products for far less than it would cost at a designer store. and when it comes to Tennis Shoes, I make sure that I don't pay over $30 for them at the average. Generally the styles I like can be bought for under $30. The more we are aware not to become led and misled by advertisements, the more we will use our creativity and our means of being frugal.
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