Mechanics of shopping: When the entire city is on sale!

Everywhere you look, some or the other product is marked down with a yellow tag. Come August and stores offer very attractive schemes to catch the attention of buyers.
Discounts are not restricted only to the retail industry, though the most bizarre schemes are often found in the clothing sections like ‘Buy 1, get 3 free’!

Restaurants too hang all kinds of signs, posters and dangling mobiles in and around the doorway to catch the customers’ attention. Bookstores mark down there prices by 20 to 30 per cent. Drug and pharmacy stores offer membership cards and credit points that can be exchanged for medicines. Banks offer 24-hour account opening schemes with zero deposits and realtors offer to have you drive out in a new car on down-payment for a housing property.

These sale items are well packaged and advertised, and it seen that they are quickly picked up; even McDonalds found that 75 per cent of people read the menu after they had ordered.

Shopping is such a craze that some countries have built their tourism themes around it. Take the Dubai Shopping Fest that happens in February or the Great Singapore Sale where the merchandise of every shop in the city is on sale at 40 to 50 per cent lesser value. How do such economics work?

For an illustration: the fashion industry follows a season cycle, summer/autumn wear and winter wear. In tropical countries, the summer stock arrives in February and lasts till July. Come August, the stores have to offload their summer and autumn stock to prepare for the winter and spring collections which last from September till February.

The August sales when retail clothing stores offer good deals therefore make space available for the fresh winter stock. It is presumed that the summer merchandise has already been sold with reasonable profit margins during the peak season and the discount being offered is at the original cost price for clearing the store’s inventory.

Book stores, for instance, do not offer seasonal products, yet they offer markdowns of 20 to 30 per cent. The idea that booksellers’ use for offering bargain prices is to offload books that are not popular and are sitting on the shelves and not moving. Selling the books at cost price helps by clearing the existing stocks and purchase of new books that will move faster.

The psychology of shopping hints to the fact that there is more to “why do people shop” than the obvious answer “in order to buy something.” People sometimes kill time by looking around, socialising with people by window shopping or browsing together. Using a shopping spree as a mood-lifting occasion is a common thing with women. Many shopping sprees may then be motivated by reasons other than the purpose of an actual purchase.

Stores are therefore designed keeping in mind the varied interest and consumer behaviour of men and women. Men prefer to visit music stores, books stores and home depot stores whereas women prefer clothing, cosmetics, shoes, bags and accessories.

Women walk at a relaxed pace through the store, examine merchandise, compare products and values, interact with sales staff, ask questions, try on stuff and ultimately make purchases. Men in comparison are more reckless, less poetical, spend less time looking and move faster through the aisles of the store.

Men are not particularly attracted by discount and sale purchases, while women just love the price cuts. As consumers, we do not always look at products on sale, as those that are either unpopular during the peak season or as designs that have not received much attention and popularity. During the sale season, it is the economics of shopping that reigns over the psychology of shopping, as buyers queue up to make purchases at reduced prices to get appropriate value for money.