If money were no object, a lot of us would shop at Neiman Marcus over Kohls.  Why?  We perceive the merchandise at Neiman’s to be higher quality, more durable, more fashionable, and generally a better product than the reams of clothing jammed into the racks of Kohl’s.  At Neiman’s, we’re talking clothing with hefty price tags, often running into the thousands, while Kohl’s sometimes marks clothing down so cheaply, that the prices are under $1.00.  It’s probably safe to assume that Neiman’s merchandise is superior to Kohl’s.  However, what if the same piece of clothing were put into both stores, with drastically different price tags?  Shoppers may very well pay more for the product at Neiman’s than at Kohl’s.  Why?  A lot of shopping is based on psychology.  An experiment with a bottle of wine that was profiled in the news this week shows that perception of quality is frequently based on price tag over actual quality.  People chose a $45 bottle of wine as being superior to a $5 bottle of wine, even though both bottles were actually the same wine.  There was no difference whatsoever.  Some people may argue that quality of wine is difficult to distinguish.  This may be true, as I am certainly no wine expert.  But this does remind me of another experiment that a friend conducted while she was managing a gift store a few years ago.  The gift store carried high-end china, silver and crystal items, with lines like Waterford, Swarovski, and Baccarat.  The friend happened to be shopping in lower Manhattan and picked up some $2.00 fake flower pots in Chinatown.  For fun, she put these items on the shelves of the store, and marked them up several times over.  They were snapped up by shoppers during a big sale.  My friend was astonished.  These items were not brand name and they could be purchased for a small fraction of the price from a street vendor in New York.  However, because the flower pots were intermingled with high end silver, crystal, and china merchandise in a fancy gift store, shoppers perceived the flower pots to be high end as well.   My friend’s experiment demonstrates that shoppers still need to be discriminating and selective when shopping at Tiffany’s or Marshall’s.  I suspect that retailers may intermingle all sorts of products throughout their stores, to raise their overall gross margins.  Therefore, it’s up to the shoppers to find the real value in what they buy.