Altheabyanothername said: ...
Twice the price for the same quality of alfalfa 
...
I've learned to avoid the shelves in "feed stores" or "coops". I think they make all their profit from that.
I was looking for crushed granite grit once, and found a one-quart or half-gallon bag on a shelf. It was a very pretty bag, with bright colors and pictures and maybe a re-sealable lip. It weighed somewhere around 5-10 pounds and cost around $7-8. It had glowing descriptions of the quality of that granite grit (??) It didn't have dancing girls, but that was the only marketeering hog-wash that it lacked.
Something made me ask the clerk.
Instead of the pretty-pretty-rip-off-bag, I got the
50 pound bag "from the warehouse" for $10.50.
The "consumer packaging" made it cost almost 5-10 times as much!
Or, you could say the warehouse gave you an 80% to 90% discount.
The consumer culture knows no bounds of decency or reasonableness. When Star Trek invented the Ferengi, they were SUPPOSED to be an exaggerated caricature of greed, conscience-less heartlessness, and crassness.
I think instead that business schools saw those episodes and got ideas they had not previously thought of.
Now the only difference between a Ferengi and the typical CEO is the big ears.
