Driving a hard bargain
I took a small shopping trip to our local Tesco extra superstore (which is a behemoth of a shop where you can buy almost anything imaginable), a part of my studently routine in which I become acutely aware of how expensive living in your own home actually is. However, that’s beside the point as it was here that I noticed that Tesco’s seemed to have a surprising amount of 2 for 1’s, price-cuts and discount brands, certainly more than usual.
This got me wondering, firstly is this case the same with all supermarkets? And Secondly how come they’ve suddenly upped the ante, considering January (the most miserable month of the year for many) is now over. I have a feeling that what with all the bad news in the economy at the moment, the supermarkets are trying to go to any lengths to get the customers into the shops, after all they are still posting healthy profit margins for the most part. The whole trick seems to be, to get the customer to buy more than they planned to. I certainly felt this pull towards buying some items, purely on the whim that it’s cheap and it would mean I have something extra or special that I could enjoy.
Are we really so ingrained with consumerism, that the idea of retail therapy, and buying things outside your needs on the basis that it’s cheap now, even though you are actually spending more than you planned to, is really the only way we can react? Isn’t that what got us there in the first place? I guess this is part of the supermarkets game. I have no doubts as I emerged from Tesco’s with numerous items which weren’t on my shopping list, whilst I felt a rush of fulfillment and considered the millions of possibilities that the extra chocolate pudding desserts would provide for my day. Damn and Blast!
As a final comment, you could be forgiven for thinking that I may have chosen to write about the snow this week, and that might have been a good idea if Cardiff had had more snow than it did. Monday night and Tuesday morning and it was gone. All the more annoying as meanwhile, the rest of the country went into a blind panic as it was faced with tons of the white stuff disrupting daily life. It’s a funny old world.
This got me wondering, firstly is this case the same with all supermarkets? And Secondly how come they’ve suddenly upped the ante, considering January (the most miserable month of the year for many) is now over. I have a feeling that what with all the bad news in the economy at the moment, the supermarkets are trying to go to any lengths to get the customers into the shops, after all they are still posting healthy profit margins for the most part. The whole trick seems to be, to get the customer to buy more than they planned to. I certainly felt this pull towards buying some items, purely on the whim that it’s cheap and it would mean I have something extra or special that I could enjoy.
Are we really so ingrained with consumerism, that the idea of retail therapy, and buying things outside your needs on the basis that it’s cheap now, even though you are actually spending more than you planned to, is really the only way we can react? Isn’t that what got us there in the first place? I guess this is part of the supermarkets game. I have no doubts as I emerged from Tesco’s with numerous items which weren’t on my shopping list, whilst I felt a rush of fulfillment and considered the millions of possibilities that the extra chocolate pudding desserts would provide for my day. Damn and Blast!
As a final comment, you could be forgiven for thinking that I may have chosen to write about the snow this week, and that might have been a good idea if Cardiff had had more snow than it did. Monday night and Tuesday morning and it was gone. All the more annoying as meanwhile, the rest of the country went into a blind panic as it was faced with tons of the white stuff disrupting daily life. It’s a funny old world.
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