At one time, upper- and middle-class shopping centers turned up their noses at dollar stores, assuming that their presence would hurt the image of neighboring retailers, as well as the area as a whole. My, how times have changed.
Long lines are bad for business. An especially long line at a store’s checkout area can scare off some customers from making a purchase, or just leave the shopper aggravated—and less likely to come back. Also, the longer the wait to pay, the more time the shopper has to rethink the purchase. What are stores [...]
Together, these forces cause normally smart consumers to skip key steps in the buying process—namely, pausing to think about how much the item is actually worth, and shopping around.
Online shoppers are getting smarter—and slower. Two years ago, consumers clicked on an online ad an average of 2.7 times before making a purchase. By early 2011, the average had risen by 15%, to 3.1 clicks. Consumers are also taking more time and are more likely to visit a competing site to check prices before [...]
“If you choose to spend a dollar today, you are actively choosing not to have four dollars, or six, or even eight later.”
During the past winter holiday shopping season, free shipping was a big trend. Retail giant Walmart, for instance, offered free shipping on some 60,000 items. Now, instead of continuing to expand free shipping services, Walmart is ramping up its “ship-to-store” program, in which shoppers order merchandise online that they’ll later pick up in a store [...]
Cheap trendy jewelry and amusing throwaway gifts are placed strategically to encourage impulse buys and lure shoppers further into the depths of the store, where pricier items—and the occasional celebrity—lurk. Consumers can’t help themselves.
“They talk like that to hypnotize the bidders. Auctioneers don’t just talk fast—they chant in a rhythmic monotone so as to lull onlookers into a conditioned pattern of call and response, as if they were playing a game of ‘Simon says.’ The speed is also intended to give the buyers a sense of urgency: Bid [...]
Here’s one of those weird-yet-fascinating, quirky-yet-perhaps-helpful research findings: People who clench their muscles—by, say, making a fist or tensing their biceps—show a brief spurt of improved willpower. So, if one of your long-term goals is to save money, you might be able to fight off the impulse buy urge when shopping by giving a store [...]
