Hi,
I am just back from Macau on Sunday. I went there to conduct the NLP Practitioner Training. After completion of the program, I went to buy some bakery products. Macau are famous for some kinds of bakery items.
I was quite tired of those famous brands like X Kee and X X Yuen. I want something different. So I go around to search. I found a small bakery with "Established 1928" in their logo. It sounds good. Though there was not too many customers (actually, there was just one single customer) inside but I still bought from them.
After returning home, I tasted some of the products. They are really bad.
I was wrong. I mistakenly interpreted the "Established 1928" as a sign of good quality. It is just an artificial sign created by the owner, but not the emergent sign we should look for.
"Established 1928" can be a lie, but I am not saying that they are lying. They can still exist since 1928, might be just because they owned the property so that they can run the business under a very low cost.
The sign I should look for is the traffic in their shop. If they are really good, they should have returning customers.
They have the usual packaging boxes (I saw them at the back of their shop) but they do not use them. They just give me the products inside a plastic bag. This is a sign of cutting cost and a sign of inconsistency. These are bad signs.
Lesson Learned: Look for Emergent Signs but not Artificial Signs!
Keith
