'Tis the season for shopping, I guess. Nate Oman posted recently about consumer shopping as contract negotiation, and Eric Goldman rightly commented about the high transaction costs of shopping. Today, Tyler Cowen blogs about how not shopping around is merely swapping money for time and that those of us who are busiest pay more on goods as a cost of not shopping around.
I have to confess to being in the Cowen camp of people who do not spend the time necessary to shop for bargains. I never am able to brag about the $5 party dress I bought at TJ Maxx or the software that was free after rebate at Costco. Someone once told me that the secret to finding bargains at TJ Maxx, Marshall's or Loehmann's was to go there often so you get there when the good shipments come in. Yuck. I shop online. That may seem like bargain shopping because I can compare prices fairly easily, but amazingly most things seem to be the same price on the Internet when you start looking around. I also pay for the convenience by paying for shipping, which is sort of unnecessary. However, most of my gift recipients live elsewhere, so I would have to ship things myself anyway. Shipping to myself I rationalize as a delivery cost that, as noted before, buys me time saved schlepping all over town.
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1. Posted by Max on December 15, 2005 @ 8:29 | Permalink
Ah, but they are not all the same cost! The same wait-and-see strategy applies to the internet, it's just much easier to pull off. The thing to do is (1) find a retailer with consistently lower prices and (2) wait for them to have a sale or clearance.
Monitoring sales is actually pretty easy on the internet. You can, for example:
Check the FatWallet forums
or
Follow the Roosster's RSS deals (or, my favorite, the "fastest spreading deals" at the top of the page)
or
any one of the links at the Roosster, which include the FatWallet forum and Ben's Bargains, two of my favorites.
FatWallet, in particular, is worth visiting because, if you set up an account there, and you go through FatWallet, then you'll receive part of the online commission, which can amount to savings of generally 3-10%.
Following these methods, I've already purchased
(1) a Dell laptop for my parents for $500 off
(2) a Jos A. Bank wool coat for myself for $320 off
(3) tons of fashionable gifts for my wife and her sisters from Bluefly for 20% off of their list price, which is already 50% of list price.
[Disclosure: nope, don't work for any of these companies, not a paid spammer]
2. Posted by Mike Madison on December 15, 2005 @ 11:37 | Permalink
For years, I've referred to the phenomenon that Christine describes as "the time-money continuum," which parallels the space-time continuum. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's done so, and I'd be surprised if the paper that Tyler's post refers to is the first one on the subject.
3. Posted by Eric Goldman on December 15, 2005 @ 11:51 | Permalink
Some people *enjoy* the process of shopping/bargain hunting, even if they don't buy anything. (I'm not one of those people unless I'm on a Slinky hunt). So it would be a mistake to think of shopping as purely a "cost" for all shoppers. Eric.
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