On Sale Vs. For Sale

Why can we simply buy what we need? There are too many factors that fall into play while thinking about the different choices. Before making a final purchase, ask yourself, “what brought be to get this item?” The reason you bought something can be simply out of habit, because we saw someone else buy it, and finally because people are naturally impulsive.

The reason we buy certain products can be directly linked to the habits we've formed, what others around us have and how impulsive we are. My research was found at Psychology Today.

 Image found Here.

Habit plays a very large role in not just what we get, but what specific brand of that item we get. The first time you go to a store by yourself to get groceries, what kind of bread do you get? Do you get the new fancy loaf? Or do you get the same kind of bread you grew up on? This kind of habit is called inertia, or a resistance to change. According to Psychology Today, this habitual style of buying comes in two forms, inertia and basic repetition. I know that my mother always gets bananas from the store out of habit because we never eat bananas and yet she comments on how she should stop buying them because they go bad before anyone wants any. Next time she goes to the store she still get bananas.

Buying things we see other people have or we see them buying. In a sense it is almost childish to want something just because someone else has it. Back when the Wii was a brand new console and all my friends had it. I would hear them at school talking about it and what games they had and everything along those lines until I admittedly became jealous. My sister and I practically begged my mother to get it for us. Four years later and we sold it because no one was using it. This sense of others influencing others can happen right at a store. Someone buys a new brand of candy at the checkout line and states how much they love this new candy and then chances are, you will try it too.

Impulsiveness is not something you can learn to become, you either are or aren’t. Just like being outgoing, impulsive people are more likely to buy all sorts of foods just to see what tastes best in soup. A not impulsive person would more likely follow the cookbook and buy exactly what they need for the soup. It is producers jobs to target the impulsive people to grab their item off the shelf and indirectly influence the not impulsive people to try something new.

With all these different ways for companies to get to a buyer, that buyer may even feel overwhelmed by all the choices. This can be solved with customer service. It is a little weird how everyone who works there just so happens to like the brand that is getting the store the most money. If a customer service person recommends a certain brand of food, it would be awkward to not get what they recommended. This all ties back into the idea that buying and selling goods have many different sides and back alleyways to get a customer to buy your product.