Who doesn’t like discounts? For many people, discount is a good money-saving offer in which they can spend less to get things they want. However, what if discount actually leads to overconsumption?
Starting from Black Friday up to seasonal or minor discounts, companies keep on offering stuffs at apparently cheaper prices to the customers. Customers, seeing the ‘generous offers,’ tend to directly purchase the item(s) without assessing whether they truly need it.
Usually, they do not even use the items maximally as they do not really need it in the first place. Although this direct purchase might insinuate temporary happiness for them, it actually brings them to more misery.
The misery, accordingly, takes shapes in the inability to invest or save the supposedly investable money. The flash offers arguably blind people from seeing the bigger picture, the financial goals they can achieve if they have saved more.
Many people might argue that the purchase leads to happiness, which is indubitably important, or they don’t do it most of the times. However, is that really so? If that’s really the happiness, won’t they just need more and more money to make another purchase later on because discounts will never end?
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How Discount Leads to Overconsumption
Considering the preceding discussion, discounts have a massive influence to make people buy stuffs they probably do not even need in the first place. Thus, taking the argument into account, any discount has the same probability to cause overconsumption.
For instance, a person has just received his/her salary while suddenly, coincidentally, this person finds that a certain clothing brand conducts a huge discount. Fished by the promo, the person decides to check it out with no intention of buying, at least at first.
Upon checking the available discounts and items, the person encounters a certain piece of clothing that he/she kind of likes. Despite having enough clothes for the daily needs, the person decides to buy it anyway.
Now, inside this person’s head, he/she thinks that this will be it and decide not to buy anymore if there’s a discount. Besides, the person also believes that the clothes might be of significant use at some point in the future.
Concerning the case study, what makes him/her think that he/she will never repeat the same thing in the near future? What will prevent the person from doing the similar thing if there’s another mouthwatering discount? What’s the probability that the item will serve a significant purpose in the person’s life?
The argument never intends to persecute companies and their discounts. Instead, what the article aims for is to make people contemplate before making financial decisions (as this is immensely important).
While contemplating might take a long enough time, there is actually a simple, temporary alternative we can follow. Hunting for discounts is very okay so long as the discounts apply for the item that has some urgency in our life.
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