I love shopping, and it is not one of my husband's favourite activities.
When I say I love shopping, I am not an obsessive shopper, who shops 8 hours at a stretch, or demagnetizes the credit card with use. Every once in a while I love to stroll through the aisles, just looking at the interesting things out there, browsing if you may - but not necessarily online.
When something attracts my attention I alert the better half to take note. All I have to do is say is:
"Isn't this nice"
I can reel the reminder of the conversation in my sleep:
"Yes, it is....Why don't you buy it?" he quips.
"I only said it was nice, I never said I wanted to buy it!"
"Well, if you don't want to buy it, why bother telling me?"
"Because I thought of sharing my obs."
Oh well....I never learn, and he never learns. I may be generalising here, but when women shop and say something is nice, it is not always with the desire to acquire the article. There are times when the intention is to buy, but THAT, you can sense in the tone and eyes. (In such situations, regardless of what you say, we buy the article.)
Here is my theory with shopping: you have to browse around to see what you like enough to buy.
Here is my better half's theory: you have to browse around only when you know you like something well enough to buy.
My question is: how do you know you like something enough to buy, unless you spend some time aimlessly looking around?
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Shopping Cliche
Posted by nourish-n-cherish at 4:04 PM
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9 comments:
@ Saumya: It is an interesting observation...i will try to dissect the blog into two pieces...the first is the disconnect in terms of decisions to shop and the second is for your real question
a) here is how i can think of the disconnect...Sriks thinking is more discrete and your thinking is more continous...is you assume that the polar ends are either 0 (not buy at all) and 1(buy for sure), sriks believes that either you go for the 1 or the 0..whereas your preference could possibly be distributed over the continous space within the interval [0,1] (okieee please dont kill me)..obviously, being polar is less efficient..
now to move to point b
b) It really depends on the person. The idea behind buying is based on how much value you place on the item. For instance a hungry man in the middle of the desert will place more value on a morsel of food as compared to a diamond.
If you believe that you need to aimlessly look around before deciding to buy it tells me how you value things. Your decision to buy is not predetermined! Hence the value you place on buying is based on the fact that despite having no desire to buy, there was something in some product which attracted your attention. hence it is value seeking that seems to be at play here.
Think about an alternative situation. I hate shopping. Hence if I go to a shop, the moment I see something that attracts me I buy it. Hence, my mind is predetermined that I will shop and not spend too much time thinking about alternatives.
Hence to put it simple, the threshold for accepting that a product if valuable in your case is higher, which explains why you like to wander and consider as many possibilities as possible in the choice set before plunging into the purse.
I think this topic is one for debate among a lot of families...Since you used the word "better half" for ur husband, it is quite obvious whose intuition/smartness/decision-making skills/ yada yada is better..:)...In anycase, following r few cents of my humble opinion..:)
1) Reason why most men spend less time in shopping is not because they are hasty. They have very few choices to choose from. Either it is a jeans/shirt/T-shirt..Occasionally, we do fancy ourselves with shorts...But, that's about it...
2) We dont consider 8 hours as an obsessive shopper. They are lunatics. For us, more than 1-2 hrs is a stretch, especially if repeated >1 time a week...
3) Demagnetizing a credit card is not an issue as long as the time taken is less...
4) We are okay if less-than-or-equal-halves spend all their infinite wisdom into buying things on their own time. When it comes to sharing time, it is better spent on something that makes both parties happy. The only reason we spend time in shopping is a selfless act to keep u folks happy..:)... Imagine asking you folks to sit with us for a game of cricket for an hour or two, passing comments and asking comments from you... Are you folks up for it?
5) Wandering around aimlessly in a shopping mall is not shopping...
I think, buying what one wants is more economical than buying something that looks attractive after 2 hours of wandering aimlessly. Malls and shopping complex are going to make things look attractive. That's their purpose. I think, even technically, doing more research over web or other tools before shopping is smarter than going to a place and spend few hours looking at stuff. It only convinces us that we made a right decision given the physical effort we put into it. In reality, it may still not be the most optimal solution...
All the above comments become invalid if shopping is someone's "interest"... Each person has their own set of interests. As long as they dont cause negative interference, all arguments of rationality disappear and only happiness persists... Keeping the less-than-or-equal half happy is the key...:)
Oh my god......the list of people I should not even think of calling while browsing in the mall is increasing ....
I shall let Shoba deal with your quip about better halves - I think that would be more effective, and probably ensure you remember it as well ;)
@Mindframes,
Firstly, when I searched the web for the definition of better half...this is what I came up with..
"one's spouse; esp., one's wife: a humorous usage" .
Please note that it says "Esp One's Wife" . So, I will let u decide who is the better half. :-)
I think it is used figuratively rather than literally.
Regarding shopping, I am not an obsessive shopper and I shop , maybe,once a month and I cannot shop more than a couple of hours, so I guess I might agree with you on certain points there.
Well.... to each , his own, but I do know people who are capable of shopping the whole day and love it too..
Agree totally with Saumya - We don't have to own everything that is beautiful.
My husband has the same reaction, "..let's buy it.." Sharing that expression does not mean we want to buy it.
@survivor: better half? ofcourse, it's me...:)...
Another interesting thing I've observed is that, whenever the wife wants something, irrespective of the cost, the guys almost always ask them to buy it, whereas when the guys want something, the immediate responses are,
"Why do u need it?" OR
"Dont u have the same colored blah blah..." OR
"Do you really need it?" OR
"You are going to waste it" OR
"This color/model suits best for you (choosing a color that we dont like)". Further emphasizing and convincing us that we dont know which color will suit us... (Okay, I am a little on the border when it comes to distinguishing colors. But, that doesnt mean much..isnt it?..;))
Why such a disparity? My educated guess is that there is some wiring problem in the brain between the 2 genders in question... Some mars/venus thing in action...
Mindframes@ very funny but true response.
When it comes to dresses, we all have something in mind. And it is tough for others to pick that. The problems comes when the better half suggests a dress which he/she thinks will be perfect for you (and which doesn't match 100% with what you have in mind).
So if you find that perfect dress/thing you have in mind, then go and buy it.
Worth/Cost & Having too many etc. are valid reasons not to buy of course.
@survivor: since saumya was using the phrase 'better half', we have to assume it refers to Sriks and not to Saumya's wife.... right?
So Sriks is the better half
Sriks: you gotta treat me for that dude.
@mindframes: Dude, I can't agree with you more. I have the exact same observation. If meera wants something.. I just say -- u want it ? sure!
But if I want something... I'm a spendthrift... :)
Man....that was hilarious. As I was reading Mindframes responses, I could readily imagine me doing that to Sriks!
I laughed out loud!
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