Have a plan and stick to your budget. That’s the advice of Adam Craig, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Kentucky.
“Break it down per person and say ‘this is my budget per person that I’m shopping for. Here’s what I’m willing to spend on these items for particular people.’ That’s probably helps you stick to that budget the best,” says Craig.
And do your homework. Craig says companies pay millions of dollars to draw in impulse buys especially when it comes to advertising Black Friday deals and online shopping turns their investment into billions with the click of a button.
Advertised in store deals may also not be all that they appear. Craig says prices may often be the same as they were a few weeks ago, but they are packaged with a shiny Black Friday sale bow, playing on customers emotions to gain a purchase. Craig reiterates, have a budget and do your research.
“What gets people into trouble is when they don’t have that set and then they’re on Amazon or another site or in a store and they see a sign and that sign says, ‘hey this product is at 30% off’ or something like that.” Craig says, “In kind of the heat of the moment don’t necessarily don’t critically think through is this a really good sale price.”
Fortunately for you the consumer, just as you can buy something almost instantly, you can research the product and track pricing just as swiftly.
“There are applications. There are social media accounts. There are web pages that you can look to that will do some of this price tracking. There are browser plug ins. There’s a lot of technology that will help us figure out, is this price a good price that the product very rarely reaches or is this the same price that the product is put on sale at every single month.”
Lifehacker.com lists Camelcamelcamel, Honey, and SlickDeals, as some of the top apps that can help you determine whether "deals" are worth buying.
