Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 179 of 1982 Nobel-laureate economist George Stigler‘s 1971 paper “Can Regulatory Agencies Protect the Consumer?” – which is reprinted as Chapter 11 of Stigler’s 1975 collection, The Citizen and the State: Essays on Regulation [link added]:

The great merchandising dynasties – the Marshall Fields, the Macys, the Lazarus companies, Sears Roebuck, and Ward – are famous for their standards of reliability, not for the skill with which they ignore a customer’s complaints. Their main asset, and the source of their economic prosperity, is their reputation for fair and careful dealing. Similarly with manufacturers: Henry Ford became enormously richer than Lydia Pinkham.