By Mia Deych, Mark Levy, and Aaron Pomerantz
Last Updated 9/10/2016 at 2:20 PM
Tel Aviv, HaMelech George: With the continued success of Tel Aviv’s new Discount Pharmacy “Good Pharm“, experts are shaking their heads at a shocking phenomena: that a city and country with lots and lots of Jews in it would be attracted by the opportunity to pay lower prices for goods and services.
“I didn’t see this coming. Not in a million years.” explained Hebrew University Economics Professor Yair G. “I just kind of thought that the Israeli public would be a bit more hesitant to go to a store just because the exact same items cost less there.”
Gila C., from Israel’s Ministry of Finance, was equally dumbfounded. “The actions of the public, they just don’t make sense. According to our charts, the public would want to spend a bit of extra money supporting Superpharm’s business model of charging higher prices for common household items.” Gila took a long sip from her coffee and stared out of her office window into the distance. “I know this sounds crazy, but it’s almost as if opening up the economy to competition actually lowers prices and benefits the public.”
Tel Aviv residents could not hide their excitement about the new store. The Daily Freier spoke with Alert Local Ronit S. as she exited the store with several bags of items. “This place is amazing! I live in the Old North, so it isn’t always convenient to shop here. But when I read about it on Secret Tel Aviv, I had to check it out. Anyway, I’ve been seeing this guy for about a month, and it’s not really going anywhere. But he lives just one block over from Good Pharm, so I just don’t want to end things until I figure stuff out. Or until, you know, Good Pharm opens something up near the Namal.”
Superpharm, for its part, is not taking the new competition lying down. Starting next week, it will launch a new campaign to lure back customers by raising prices on select items.