The price is the part you are buying

Stand at a baggage belt at Dubai airport for ten minutes and you can sort the luggage into two kinds.

The first kind is built to be thrown about. Hard corners, cheap wheels that roll, a shell that takes a dent and forgets it. The second kind costs many times as much, scuffs if you look at it, weighs more empty than the first one does full, and comes off the belt with its owner wincing.

It would be easy to call the second kind a bad deal. It is not. It is a different deal.

Once, paying more mostly bought you a better made thing. The dear coat kept out more cold than the cheap one, and the price tracked the work.

That link has worn thin. The dearest version of a bag, a watch, a hotel room or a pair of trousers is rarely the one that does its job best. What the buyer is paying for is the paying. The cost is the signal, and the signal is the benefit. Other people at the belt can read it, and so can the person carrying it.

Which is why the drawbacks do not hurt sales and sometimes help them. A bag that needs care, a fabric that cannot go in the machine, a car too low for the speed bumps on the way home: each one says that the owner can afford the price and also afford the trouble. Inconvenience becomes part of the message.

If you are selling something in this category, it helps to be honest with yourself about which deal you are offering.

You are not selling a better bag. You are selling a more expensive one, and for the person buying it, that is exactly the point.