The Lure Of The Bargain Part 2

July 7, 2009

Interview with Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture
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 Mike Carruthers:
When you go shopping, all kinds of psychological tools are being used to get you to buy. Shopping carts for one…

Ellen Ruppel Shell:
Shopping carts were controversial when they were introduced in the supermarket. Men didn't like shopping carts because they thought they were feminine and women didn't like shopping carts because it reminded them of baby carriages.

Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of the book Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture …

But they got adapted into supermarkets and then relatively recently they got brought into department stores. When you don't have a shopping cart, on average you will buy one thing opposed to when you have one.One thing to think about when you're going shopping is to not use a shopping cart.

How you pay for items also influences what you buy.

We hate to part with money, all of us hate to part with money because we think of it as a loss - it's a bummer. Not with redit cards much less though; if we use credit cards the combinations of bargains and credit cards are a pretty dangerous combination.

 
And speaking of bargains, do you know what a reference price is? A reference price is supposedly the retail price posted next to the sale price, the price you pay.

Reference prices have a huge psychological impact on buyers. Even if you don't believe it mattresses are a classic case of where the reference price is always really high and the mattress is always on sale - and we really don't know what we are getting.

To listen to the complete unedited interview, click here.