Eight shaves on the cheap disposable razor and I've seen no decrease in shaving quality.
In some ways, razor manufacturers have created their own problem. Yes, many if not most men change their blades/cartridges/disposables more frequently than I plan to do. However, I suspect that they pour no end of money into their advertising to encourage men (or the women who buy their shaving supplies) to buy more often than they need to.
It reminds me of one of the first website development projects I worked on ages ago. Gillette, then an independent company, hired my employer to help them develop an ecommerce site. Specifically, they wanted to sell blades, Braun shavers (which they owned), Oral-B toothbrushes (ditto) and Duracell batteries (ditto).
They faced a considerable challenge: because they sold most of their product through mass marketers and supermarkets, they couldn't offer a lower price than retail. They feared that, say, Wal-Mart might stop stocking their products if Gillette sold them at a discount directly.
Instead, they wanted to trade on convenience and selection. They reasoned that buying online would allow consumers to free up their time to do other things. Or that they could schedule monthly shipments of blades, batteries, brushes and so on. Or that they could find the menthol-scented, sensitive-skin, extraplusdoublegood version of the product they used.
My clients needed a few rounds of focus groups to reveal the trap that they had set for themselves: they had trained the customer too well.
Walk into any mass retailer or supermarket. More specifically, walk over to the checkout line. What do you see? Chances are, batteries and razor blades. You'll also see entire store aisles dedicated to shaving products and batteries, with more stock-keeping units (SKUs, or types of products) than most people will ever need. You'll also see battery displays near just about any battery-powered device sold in the store. In short, Gillette simply couldn't make the purchase of their products any more convenient.
I don't have anything to add to this tale, except maybe that sometimes it helps to ask if a problem your organization is facing really is a problem after all.
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