Bargain bin… ah yes, a common terminology, but what does Wikipedia have to say about it? Why is it a “bin” rather than something more organized?
20190930/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bargain_bin
Well, well, that I do not quite know about, other than the fact that it is common to just put it in a bin. I guess what makes it so is the store owner’s sense of urgency simply to get rid of the stock as quickly as possible, under the false guise that eschewing the little effort required to organize is a significant time saver. Which, as those of us who know better, isn’t. Well, that’s all I can say. It’s a common human trend to do things that way, regardless of the logic of doing so.
But, what is really interesting: “inferior good.” This is a good which those of higher income buy less of, rather than buying more of as would be predicted by their aptitude to spend more money. As a consequence, inferior goods come to be associated with the lower class, while the opposite, superior goods, are associated with the upper class.
20190930/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good
Even more interesting, the Giffen good. Even as the price of an inferior good goes up, people of the lower class will purchase more of it.
20190930/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good
“Variety store” is also related to “bargain bin” by the Wikipedia “See also” links. “Dollar store” is another name.
20190930/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_store
And a similar phenomenon of the bargain bin in computer world of the 1990s? “Shovelware,” so called in relation to the phenomenon of CD-ROM vendors packing as much software onto CD-ROMs as possible, regardless of quality, to fill up their sheer capacity. Though, also in the music and recording industry world of the 1990s, similar complaints were made about CD-ROM albums: they would have one good song, and a whole bunch of other junk songs to fill up the space. With the advent of individual downloading from online stores, the annoyance of shovelware has all but vanished.
20190930/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shovelware
But really, I have to say. What’s with all the complaining about shovelware and bundling? I see it as a perfectly fine and more honest view of the world, when in this world, people want to bias their experiences to only the most entertaining. By all means, “shovelware” is more useful to historians as it provides a more objective and unbiased view of the full world, rather than only providing an objective and unbiased view of the part of the world that people view as most entertaining or memorable.
But, that’s just the thing that I called out. The point is, it’s all about consumerism, and that’s why the complaints surface as so common.