Saturday, October 4, 2008

The best shopping secrets



People think that anyone can find a discount when they shop. I know that sounds funny. But break it down into the parts, and you realize that there are skills involved here. But in truth, some people are simply better shoppers than other people. I think this is often overlooked by people who do not study consumer behavior very closely. There are entire branches of study devoted to how people shop that the marketers use to design their campaigns.

How do you tell a discount shopper from the regular consumer? There are several factors that people who are good shoppers will exhibit. One of the most important shopping traits is patience. Bad shoppers are impatient. The thing about finding a good bargain is that you need a bit of timing. Because there are not sales all the time, you need to be at the store when a sale is actually happening. This requires some planning and research to figure out where the best deals are going to be. The dedicated discount shopper is good at doing this work ahead of time.

Good discount shoppers also know the places to find this great deal info. While similar, this is a different capability. This skill involves doing detective work to find the best sources for information about the best deals. Taken together, these shoppers are both disciplined and focused. In summary, a discount shopper is not someone who just happens on a sale and saves tons of money. If you feel you are not saving enough money when you shop, perhaps you need to examine both your ability to find the sources where deals are published as well as you discipline to only buy when sales are running. Taken together, these two skills will help you save big.



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