We always assume that the price in certain stores are lower, but are they really?
This is something to think about, in the way that we shop for goods and make choices.
Just because a store SAYS it’s “No Frills” or is called “Valu-Mart”, you can be sure that their product positioning is that they are of lower costs, but it’s not necessarily always the case on certain items. While you might buy 90% of your items at a lower, or comparably lower price, they have to make money somewhere, and it might be $2 on other items.
Another way we screw ourselves over is the way we shop for groceries for example.
Groceries have found the secret, and are using it to their advantage: people only look for certain items to gauge how cheap a store is using milk, bread, eggs for an example.
When we see that milk is $0.20 cheaper in that store for 1L, then we assume the entire store is just as cheap.
That is SO not the case, but retailers know that most people are too damn lazy to keep a price book, or to really remember the prices so that they’ll know if they’re getting ripped off or not.
Kudos to those of you keeping price books by the way. I leave that up to BF because I get confused with their stupid KG > LB pricing here where they show you the price in LB but then charge you the KG price at the cash.
But without BF, I kept a price book. I had to, or else I wouldn’t know if it was a real deal, or just an inflated price that had been discounted to push a sale.
So they price staples that you check for regularly, real low, then screw you on the higher end stuff because you’re already assuming it’s cheaper because you used the milk as a benchmark for prices.
So next time you visit a new store, do a quick once-over and check everything you’d normally buy elsewhere before declaring it fabulous.
You may end up wanting to shop for half the items at one store, and for the other half at the second store, depending on how far apart they are from each other and what they each offer in terms of variety.
- How we screw ourselves over
- 10 Tips to save money on Groceries each month
- June 2009 Budget Recap
- Researching Rental Cars
- Do you always check your receipts? You should.
Over 50 dating
on Sep 15th, 2009
@ 2:39 PM:
I annoy my friends to hell with my constant price checking! Gotta squeeze every penny