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OMG, high level of political corruption while selling chocolate to end customers via (ofter foreign company owned) private retail chains. That is quite a stereo

by miskin 9y ago

OMG, high level of political corruption while selling chocolate to end customers via (ofter foreign company owned) private retail chains. That is quite a stereotype at work here. What I usually see in Vienna is Milka at 0.99Eur price for 100g package. Slovak price tend to be bit higher at around 1.19Eur for 100g, with 0.99Eur used as promo price. I never actually bothered to compare ingredients. Please consider that selling to end customers is selling to certains price points, regardless the costs to a large degree. Milka is sold as premium chocolate bar with given price point. There’s plenty of competition both cheaper and more expensive. This is all about marketing and until recently, people were not really sensitive to ingredients, so they went with whatever is cheapest to produce within some margins of customer satisfaction. So, I think your last statement is what is considered around here to be true.

charlesdm 9y ago
Obviously, corruption depends on the country -- Slovakia is not Romania, and is not Ukraine. Political corruption lives in most western countries as well, by the way, even if you don't notice it. But as it happens, I know quite a wealthy family who got scammed for millions (through a corrupt notary) on a property deal in an EE country. It wasn't even a business dispute, just a scam. When they took the matter to court, which should have been a clear "win" case, the judge(s) (even on appeal) ruled against them, so they had no way to recover their money. From that point of view, it is not unreasonable for me to assume corruption can (potentially) play a part of it. :)
- miskin 9y ago
  I’d write something long about corruption in Slovakia, but why should I try. It is obvious that corruption exists and must be improved, but I’d bet that this is not the root cause of different ingredients in Milka chocolate. Since we’re part of EU, there is very little (if anything) that needs to be done officially to sell food produced in other EU country, so I can hardly imagine any good reason for rampant corruption. Nobody is even arguing that food that is sold in EE is non-conforming to health codes (another possible reason for corruption). People complain that they get treated differently. Personal anecdote - I visit Austria almost weekly due to business matters and never bothered to buy anything there just because I would consider it of better quality. I always assigned any perceived differences to placebo. I argued that detergent itself, once found and tested, is cheap enough to produce and most of the cost is marketing, packaging, shipping and profit. So why on earth would anyone cheat on detergent content. At most, maybe parfumes would be different due to local preferences etc. But few weeks ago, producers of laundry detergents reacted to public outcry due to these differences with answer that in western europe, people tend to wash clothes on 30C, so they put there much more enzymes (or what) than in EE, where people tend to wash on 40C. Sure they do, when you need to add much more detergent to clean anything on 30C... So go, figure.

by miskin 9y ago

charlesdm 9y ago

Obviously, corruption depends on the country -- Slovakia is not Romania, and is not Ukraine. Political corruption lives in most western countries as well, by the way, even if you don't notice it. But as it happens, I know quite a wealthy family who got scammed for millions (through a corrupt notary) on a property deal in an EE country. It wasn't even a business dispute, just a scam. When they took the matter to court, which should have been a clear "win" case, the judge(s) (even on appeal) ruled against them, so they had no way to recover their money. From that point of view, it is not unreasonable for me to assume corruption can (potentially) play a part of it. :)

miskin 9y ago
I’d write something long about corruption in Slovakia, but why should I try. It is obvious that corruption exists and must be improved, but I’d bet that this is not the root cause of different ingredients in Milka chocolate. Since we’re part of EU, there is very little (if anything) that needs to be done officially to sell food produced in other EU country, so I can hardly imagine any good reason for rampant corruption. Nobody is even arguing that food that is sold in EE is non-conforming to health codes (another possible reason for corruption). People complain that they get treated differently. Personal anecdote - I visit Austria almost weekly due to business matters and never bothered to buy anything there just because I would consider it of better quality. I always assigned any perceived differences to placebo. I argued that detergent itself, once found and tested, is cheap enough to produce and most of the cost is marketing, packaging, shipping and profit. So why on earth would anyone cheat on detergent content. At most, maybe parfumes would be different due to local preferences etc. But few weeks ago, producers of laundry detergents reacted to public outcry due to these differences with answer that in western europe, people tend to wash clothes on 30C, so they put there much more enzymes (or what) than in EE, where people tend to wash on 40C. Sure they do, when you need to add much more detergent to clean anything on 30C... So go, figure.