Date: May 07, 2010
The heart and soul of being a smart consumer is knowing what you want. Once you know what you want, you should be able to get it at the lowest price possible. Understanding the relationship between getting what you want (benefits) and getting a good price (cost) is essential to being a smart consumer. In this article, I will examine smart consumers and the ways that they maximize their spending power.
A smart consumer will always ask, what do I get and is it really worth it? Let’s say you want to buy some celery. At the grocery store, there are two exact packages of celery, except one is precut. What’s the difference in price? A whole dollar fifty! It would seem that precutting is expensive, so why would you pay for it, when you can go home, make two cuts, and you have the exact same thing for free?
This brings up how time in related to costs and benefits. Sometimes it’s worth the extra money to have something done for you. Other times, it’s not. If I need a shirt, I could go buy the cloth and thread, and learn how to sew, but honestly, it’s not worth my time. Sure it would be cheap, but I can’t easily sew a shirt, and the end result would probably look terrible.
On the other hand, I do know how to make a spaghetti dinner. I could make a spaghetti dinner in twelve minutes. With two-fifty for meat, a dollar-fifty for sauce, and two dollars for spaghetti, I could eat spaghetti for three days straight. If I can do that, why would I spend the money for a spaghetti tv-dinner? Even if they were a dollar each, making it for myself is so much cheaper.
Being a smart consumer also means you understand the implications of price. If you’re buying a brand-new lawn mower for one-hundred dollars, you might want to ask yourself how that’s economically possible. Chances are the company cut some corners in the mower’s production. This could mean low-quality materials, low-quality workmanship, or low-quality design. The mower may work, but the question is, how long will it work. A year? Two years at most? If you intend to mow your yard for many years to come, it might be smart to just pay extra for a more expensive mower.
The smart consumer will not always know the details of costs and benefits. In these situations, he may need to do some research. He’ll need to find out what other people think of the product. Does it work? Is it worth the price? This sort of information is readily available on many product review websites.
In conclusion, being a smart consumer means you understand the costs and benefits of everything you buy. You must also realize that price can often be an indicator of quality. Because consumer decisions can sometimes be complicated, it’s important that a smart consumer does research.