All
of us love to get some freebie. Even if we get a one dollar discount on a
thousand dollar purchase, we get elated. Actually, it is not something that is
related to the magnitude of the discount. Actually, it is related to the
concept of discount itself.
Frankly
speaking, marketers play with our psychology and our greed. Also, few people
recognize and realize the fact that we lose something far more important than a
few dollars, when we look for discounts like sniffer dogs.
People
say that time is money. But they seem to completely absolve the fact that
whiling looking for discounts and hopping from one website to another, we lose
our precious time and energy. In fact, the amount of time and energy we spend
for getting a deal that is cheaper by only five dollars could have yielded much
more than that amount, if channelized properly. This is particularly true for
professionals who get paid by the hour for their work, or on a ‘per assignment’
basis.
There
is another issue that people must know – our brains are tuned to the childhood
practice of attaching more importance to the leftmost digit in any figure, and
then in a diminishing order from left to the right. That is why, the leftmost
digit of any number is called the ‘most significant digit’ or MSD and the digit
at the rightmost place is called ‘least significant digit’ or LSD.
Also,
the number of digits in a number also plays a huge role on determining the
impact of a number on our mind and price tags are framed according to it. To
make things clear, consider this: Is there any practical difference between
$1000 and $999? You may say that it is $1, but in the context of the marked
price and the discounted price, it is a decrease of 0.1% only! Also, a 3 digit
price tag makes it certainly more bearable at the first sight, because our mind
registers and processes the number of digits at the first place, then the MSD,
and then others.
Now,
you shall admit that there have been countless instances where you have wasted
half an hour browsing 10 websites for buying a product, only to see that all
the websites are giving discounts within the range of $1 to $5 only on a $200
purchase, and that you could have earned $50, had you been working for that 30
minutes!
As
a matter of fact, we hunt discounts without ever contemplating on the fact that
companies will never give us something from their pocket. Discount simply means
a tradeoff, whether it is regarding the quality, usual features, or our
personal information.
Such
trickeries are applied not only by the shopping websites, but also by the Hotel
And Ticket Booking Service providers also. These are cheap strategies
for short term profits. But the Best Hotel Booking Service
providers and the best shopping websites don’t have the myopic vision. Instead,
they stay focused on keeping things simple and charge for things that is the
most optimum one for both parties.
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