Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Barbershop/Beauty Shop Networks

 In a market economy the vendors sell something and the buyers decide to buy based on price. If it's not a commodity then quality and features come into play, but the market is supposed to be impersonal.

Got my hair cut today and got musing about networks. My experience with barbershops and my wife's experience with her hairdressers (actually just cuts) says there's a lot of networking going on.  I'd say half the patrons of my shop ask for a specific barber. (It's not a big sample; the shop is old-fashioned male-oriented and I go when there's least likely to be other patrons.) And my wife does the same thing.

You can understand why--a haircut is very personal so someone who cares will choose their barber on particular features. I guess that the market works well enough because buyers have different preferences, and there's enough of us who don't care to keep the market fairly liquid. 

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