Shopping

It’s strange. You’d think post-exam, I’d be more talkative, and blog more, but no, instead, I’m slacking off at writing blogs. Partly because for the past few days, I’ve been up to my neck filling in forms (have you ever filled in a form for a US visa? It’s complex shit yo).

Anyways, I’m a horrible shopping partner (that’s a heads up to you thousand swooning females in my fanclub). I have never understood the “walk into store then randomly walk wander about till I find something I desire” method of shopping.

Granted, I do that when shopping for clothes, but I never understood how people can walk into a department store without a pre-planned destination (like say, the men’s section, or the lingerie section).

Most people who know me would know that I am hardly one who would purchase things impulsively. Almost everything I buy, groceries included, have had research done beforehand. A shopping list is a method of research as well. If you know what you need, your mind has already did the research.

And so I thought for a while, the typical need-recognition -> research -> buy doesn’t really happen with people who walk into a department store without any particular destination in mind. It was most strange, wandering around with friends aimlessly in a department store, while listening to rationalization for things I think to be frivolous and trival.

After a while, it hit me, I do already do the wandering that other people do. It’s just I do it passively. I do not wander into the shops, instead. I store and retain memory of products I read. This is what economists call active and passive searches.

Also, when a person wants something and knows he wants it, its called directed search. For example, if I want to buy a new monitor, I would so research on all kinds of monitors and then finally making a choice, then buy it. But people also engage in undirected search. For example, I read PC Magazine (hah! as if I’d read something so biased and unobjective), and I do read on the monitors they review. 5 months later, when I want to buy a monitor, I would already know what to buy.

People who do a lot of undirected search would do less active searches in real life. Conversely, people who do a lot of directed search might do more active searches. But I usually don’t. Then again, I detest walking into stores and dealing with human beings. If I would buy a TV, I really don’t want the guy at JB Hifi telling me which one is good. I already know which want I want.

Speaking of JB Hifi, I walked in JB Hifi to buy a firewire cable today, and came out with Battlestar Galactica. So much for not having any impulse/unplanned buying.

So, tell me, how do you shop? Are you a directed searcher? Are you an undirected searcher? Tell me.