It's been a hard recession and although recovery is underway, the belt-tightening undertaken by firms has already hurt the household sector. In order to protect the bottom line, as much as possible, corporations have been shifting the cost of adjustment onto workers and consumers.

Normally, these practices intensify in a downturn, but there are also long-term trends underway. In this article we will concentrate on the costs imposed on consumers and leave aside how workers are squeezed. There are costs associated with the design and complexity of products, point-of-sale service, the adequacy of after-sales service and warrants, queuing, searching and travelling.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty let's get the issue of quality out of the way. Many, particularity tech-related products, have undoubtedly improved in quality and declined in price over the years. Take a typical product, such as a DVD player. Today, they are absolutely loaded with features that were non-existent just a few years ago. And, the constant-dollar price of the average player is actually lower than it was then.

In other words, in real-dollar terms, adjusted for quality, you are getting a very good deal indeed. This won't be a crashing new revelation to the average consumer, though some of them are actually fed-up with an overload of fancy new features that complicates life. They would prefer simpler gadgets that do a few things well, are dirt cheap and need little servicing.

One problem is that the fancier the product becomes, the more likely it is that we lose the quality of robustness. It's vulnerability to breakdown increases, requires an extensive infrastructure to service and may cost a lot to repair. The old Citroen deux chevaux (James Bond used this little charmer for one of his best getaways from the baddies) was a very basic car that could be repaired by any mechanic in a village in Central Asia. Not so for a modern auto, with its complex systems and electronic devices. As a result, most of us are frequently clobbered with hefty repair bills when something goes wrong.

In some cases, such as the airlines, the majors have been religiously cutting back on this and that, as well as bringing in a plethora of charges. This has been going on for years in order to shore up the profits of often badly-managed companies. The budget airlines have, of course, taken this to an extreme, offering a no-frills basic service plus add-ons; except that the basic has become even more so and the list of add-ons has grown.

For many products, the promise falls far short of what is actually delivered. Software is one of the categories that comes to mind. Often, they are notoriously buggy (in truth, all of them have bugs, though some have more than others). And the standard practice of software companies has been to treat licence holders as nuisance factors, leaving them to sink or swim on their own.

Alternatively, some of them ask customers to sign up to expensive annual contracts to receive half-decent support. But outraged clients have started to fight back by filling well-known web forums with warnings to potential customers. As this has gained momentum the attitude of some software companies has also undergone a change. Now they are paying more attention and troubleshooting issues at an earlier stage.

Years ago, retail stores had well-paid, properly trained and knowledgeable staff. Nowadays, customers are generally faced with ill-trained and poorly paid generic salespeople. They switch jobs frequently, one day selling computers and the next bicycles. This forces buyers to spend a lot of time and effort in researching before they purchase. The internet is full of discussion forums and commentary related to such topics. Just check the Amazon.com website as an example. If you want to buy a TV set, it is almost pointless talking to the salesman at the store. You have to check and compare technical specs online and read extensive discussions related to quality and problem issues. But you also need to exercise caution and not take all the contributions at face value. Quick to pounce on an opportunity, firms are stealthily engaging "anonymous" contributors to extol the quality of their products and bias the recommendations in their favour.

Many companies have been placing their retail outlets in remote low-cost locations, far away from any habitation. As a result, people are forced to travel long distances to make their purchases. Given that the era of cheap oil is probably over, this makes it increasingly costly to go on shopping trips. In many regions, the Wal-Marts of this world have already bombed the competition out of existence, so there aren't too many alternatives left. And when the customer reaches the store after a long road trip, he still has a lot of legwork to do, negotiating his way around the vast premises.

Iraj Pouyandeh is a strategist and senior portfolio manager at LOM Asset Management. He manages the LOM Global Equity Fund. For more information on LOM Asset Management please visit www.lomam.com