How Not to Buy

A fellow named Lee Eisenberg wrote a book called Shoptimism: Why the American Consumer Will Keep on Buying No Matter What, and in it he outlines some of the "tricks" that merchants use in order to prompt us to buy things we might otherwise not, or to buy more things than the one or two we had in mind starting out on our shopping trip.

The website Big Think posted some ideas from Eisenberg's book in an article titled "How to Resist the Irresistible: A Buyer's Guide to Shopping Tricks." They posted it on November 27th, a couple of days after many Americans might have found it a useful read while they waited in line for stores to open at midnight on the so-called "Black Friday." But it still might help the holiday season shopper think twice before spending.

The key to most of the ideas in the article and in Eisenberg's book is that retailers have spent considerable time, money and effort to try to learn how people's minds work so they can tailor their tactics to maximize sales. This isn't illegal or underhanded even if it might seem a little sneaky at times.

A simple counter-tactic might be to know what you want to buy and what you have to spend, compare prices for the product if it's available in different locations and then spend what you have budgeted for. We're most vulnerable to over-shopping or over-spending when we're trying to work an angle in our purchases. We cross over from trying to make sure we get a fair value for our money into the idea that we're somehow putting one over on someone -- whether it's the store or the manufacturer -- and we may feel cheated when we find out that the retailer or the maker still made plenty of money on our purchase that was supposed to be to our advantage. It may have been to our advantage anyway, but sometimes we don't appreciate that. Folks looking to con others often rely on a version of this principle to snare people into their schemes. The line is "You can't cheat an honest man," meaning their ability to fleece someone depends on that someone's desire to get something for nothing, or at least for less than what seems like fair market value.

It's always good to remember that low prices and good products are the means to an end, rather than the only end in themselves. Low prices and good products get us to give money to a retailer or supplier, and that's their main goal. They give us a good product because they want us to come back and spend more of our money and good products make us more likely to do that than do bad products. Sure, many take pride in their work and want to do their best, but they also recognize how that helps the bottom line.

Eisenberg's book, by the way, lists at Barnes and Noble for $26 and at Amazon.com for $19.76. But you can buy a bargain edition at Amazon for $10.40, and a used copy also from Amazon starting at $5.97 (price plus shipping). Should you decide you don't need it, well, that's free.