Perhaps a few cents for whole batch production. A lot of it is planned obsolescence. I've had countless things break on hinges or other tiny moving parts, because they were made from 3mm plastic instead of 5mm plastic. Every time it's moved it's under way more stress than it should. Therefore it'll break after around 3 years.
I don't find planned obsolescence isn't a very convincing theory for something like a blender.
It makes sense for them to cheap out to save money, or to not think too hard about design for reliability beyond any guarantee or statutory warranty period.
But it doesn't make sense for them to deliberately design stuff to fail after 3 years. There is no vendor lock in for a blender. If it fails after three years, the number of people giving more custom to the same manufacturer must be miniscule, surely?
> If it fails after three years, the number of people giving more custom to the same manufacturer must be miniscule, surely?
I'd guess blenders are a commodity at this point - for most of the market, customers are very price sensitive, so since repairability ain't gonna win you any points, you may just as well assume that you get a fraction of the market share, and if your product breaks early, you'll capture that fraction of repeat purchases. Small profit, but if your competition does the same, then it's just pure profit for all of you.
> I'd guess blenders are a commodity at this point - for most of the market, customers are very price sensitive, so since repairability ain't gonna win you any points, you may just as well assume that you get a fraction of the market share, and if your product breaks early, you'll capture that fraction of repeat purchases.
I think I'd call cars a commodity too. I used to avoid buying cars with auto transmissions or turbos. The auto transmission will need a rebuild[1] around 200000km, and the turbo is just an extra thing that could break, and yet new-car buyers vastly prefer to buy autoboxes with turbos.
Some manufacturers (Audi) stopped making manual transmission NA cars back in 2010, without even seeing a dip in sales.
If buyers cared about repair costs, auto transmissions and turbos wouldn't be anywhere near as common as we see.
[1] All cars have clutches. In a traditional auto the clutch plates are inside the box and requires many dozens more hours of billable labour than the clutch plate in a manual transmission.
Perhaps a few cents for whole batch production. A lot of it is planned obsolescence. I've had countless things break on hinges or other tiny moving parts, because they were made from 3mm plastic instead of 5mm plastic. Every time it's moved it's under way more stress than it should. Therefore it'll break after around 3 years.