We all get tempted at offers when we see discounts at stores, malls or even online websites and end up purchasing goods, which we may actually don’t require or even use in the near future. Whereas, we most likely will shrug off a genuine seller, who would be pitching for a product (with or without discount), which will actually be beneficial & useful to us.
Why do we behave like this?
Same is the story towards goods & services we end up picking; only on the ground that someone else is using same or following. Whereas we ignore products which may actually improve our lifestyle as they are not spoken in any forum or even flashed by someone.
One of the reasons why we behave like this is due to that fact that, we as a human being are psychologically tuned to follow someone or the other and when a new trend is started, we just want to copy & follow same, without even doing a basic cost benefit analysis.
There is a small segment of people who can aptly be called as challengers or risk takers, who would try new products & services, and leave behind a trail to be followed by followers. In current scenario manufacturers & marketers of the world, have all become smart & understand this very well. They exploit the system to create these artificial challengers & along with high octane discount offers, show the followers what to expect.
But in realty these so called offers are no-offers, but a disguise game employed by the marketers to create demand & pull, through discounts.
We have done a small survey with our existing customers, where after explaining above, asked them to give a ball point figure on goods purchased due to discounts, which are now not used or could have been avoided. One would be surprised that this figure comes out between 15k to35k for last year per customer…. Shocking!!!
In the process we tend to ignore important areas like annual health check-up, which needs no explanation, but will always be given the least priority. Annual health check-up is a must in developed countries & most of the developed population gives it a highest priority.
A Health check-up will cost anywhere around 5k to 15k depending upon an individual’s age & requirement. Based on above survey & money spent on worthless or useless merchandise, why one cannot look at health check-up?
It’s not that health check-up doesn’t offer discounts, but same will not get noticed as its not part of the culture and there are not too many role models to propagate same 😉
Similarly Financial Planning, which is must in any individual’s life, takes a backseat.
I am writing this not to promote Health check-up or Financial planning, but start a debate why we all will not think twice when we see offers & end up doing an impulse purchase, whereas important areas like Health check-up or Financial Planning, even though one may know about it, will always get a backseat?