Comments on: Excess: Buying More than We Really Need

By: Queercents » The Costco Effect: More than Impulse Buying

Queercents » The Costco Effect: More than Impulse Buying — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:28:04 +0000

[...] How do they create this mass appeal for impulse purchases? Bick writes, "Costco will stock only the 4,000 most popular items it can find while a grocery store might stock 40,000 separate types of items, and a Wal-Mart might stock 100,000." They narrow the choices by trying to figure out what people want. [...]

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By: Audrey

Audrey — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:07:36 +0000

Oh, man, Nina, this one hits home...for the last four months, because I've been starting up being self-employed again, I've had $0 cash for anything but food and rent (and barely that). It's given me a fantastic opportunity to actually _use_ everything I already own. I can tell you this: it takes an awfully long time to actually run out of plastic and paper bags, makeup, clothes, books to read, cards to send, pens and pencils...we Americans basically tend to buy for 12 rather than 1. I propose that the new criteria for deciding to purchase something should be: am I going to use it within the next 7 days? Anything "just in case," well...is 99% likely to be waste.

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By: DivaJean

DivaJean — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:20:09 +0000

We always try to remember to look at the pricing units- many times, we can do just as well buying something "normal sized" but generic- or a loss leader sale from our usual grocery store. We also try to do the math over the buy one/get one strategy stores try to use to trick us.

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By: Paula Gregorowicz

Paula Gregorowicz — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 17:14:36 +0000

Thanks for the link. I really like the idea of the scoop. I never really thought of that. Wonder if the same holds true for the size of the paper plates you put out at potlucks. I know for certain that the big sizes in Costco can be dangerous. 8 years ago when we bought our house we had our first picnic & shopped in Costco. We were still using the same multi-jumbo pack of ketchup like 2 years later. I mean, who needs that much ketchup unless you're running a grammar school? Yet, people (sucker that I was too) buy it because it's a "good deal".

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