I admitted to a friend last week that I had never been to Action before. Ouch. I might as well say I had never seen a goldfish in my life. Or a pig. The surprise was of the same order. However, I had arguments: it feels like a bad store with a lot of plastic rubbish, a lot of unnecessary made in China stuff, and above all, way too many people. No, I don’t feel like it. Besides, I don’t know why I would do it. He quickly sat on his horse, questioning me about which deodorant, dishwasher tablets and laundry products I used. If I never needed towels and a washing-up brush. A deodorant from Nivea? At least two euros cheaper than in the regular supermarket, he guaranteed. And dishwasher tablets? Something like that too. Cleaning stuff? Ditto.
I promised him I would take a look. Deep inside myself I knew I would never do it. Do not feel like. Want to use my time differently. But also: I know myself and I know that if I go into a store for some deodorant and a box of window cleaner, I will still come out with two bags full of things that I don’t need and for which I have no place to store them in my apartment anyway. , but which were simply too cheap to pass up. It is for this reason that I avoid outlets and stock sales, because the only reason I buy things there is because they are cheaper and not because I necessarily want or need them. I’m the kind of person for whom discounting has a counterproductive effect. And so I also ignore the advertising brochures from supermarkets and brand festivals. Only if I see “1 + 1 free” next to something that I would spontaneously put in my shopping cart, will I accept it. But they deliberately search, no.
Dishwasher for a year
For Chris Snick, who writes the section The brochure eater every Thursday at Nieuwsblad, advertising brochures have always had an appeal: “I just enjoyed browsing through them – a somewhat strange hobby, I realize. (laughs) But since I’ve had that column, about a year and a half now, I’ve been working on it a lot more. I make a reservation for the brochures every Wednesday morning.” His brochure reading also translates into his shopping behavior: “For example, if we still have one tube of toothpaste, I will not buy our brand if it is not on sale. Then I wait for the discount moment.” At times of big discounts, he suddenly buys a whole stock. Do they have a separate pantry to store all that stuff? “No, it’s not like I sometimes see on Facebook, where people seem to have a mini night shop in the basement. But we have ten bottles of fabric softener in our garage and we have a year’s supply of dishwasher tablets.”
It reminded me of a recent visit with a bunch of twenty-somethings. When they wanted to take ice cubes, it turned out that their freezer was frozen solid. The whole thing had to be pried loose and rearranged. The reason? The thing was full of pizzas. A consequence of the “2+1 free” of the brand festival at Colruyt. Rightly so, but not for everyone: if, like me, you only eat a frozen pizza once a year, the disadvantage of the full freezer outweighs the advantage of that free pizza. And if a freezer full of pizza morally forces you to eat that junk more often, it’s also a blow in the water.
Calculator
What drives the discount seeker is simple: why pay more when you can pay less? “But,” Chris Snick qualifies, “quality is important. I’m not going to save on a nice loaf of bread and so I’ll just buy a tasteless white loaf because it’s cheaper than a nice loaf of bread. And also: the soup must be worth it. Visiting four stores to save a few euros at the end, no, I don’t do that.” That last thought is reminiscent of the Flemish shoppers who drive to France to buy water. Last summer, Snick calculated how many packs of six bottles of Cristaline water (the cheapest water at the Auchan supermarket chain, which is popular with Flemish border shoppers) you need to buy to compensate for the return journey from Ghent: “On average you only made a profit from pack 25 at that time.” Anyone who lived in Roeselare and drove up and down made a profit from 13 packs of water. Just to say that driving around to buy something advertised doesn’t always pay off.”
He often does those kinds of exercises. With fabric softener, for example: “We use Lenor La Collection Zeebreeze. It contains 55 washes. I now bought it on promotion for about five cents per wash, normally it costs a little more than 8 cents per wash. If we do 150 loads of laundry per year, I will save 4.5 euros per year. I won’t travel with that. But hey, why would I pay the extra 4.50 euros?”
Another one? Snick: “Last week I bought a giant box with 155 Dreft Platinum dishwasher tablets at Albert Heijn for 24.99 euros. That’s about a third of the normal price. In concrete terms, one load of dishes now costs me sixteen cents per wash instead of 48 cents. On average, the dishwasher here runs every two days. So I have a supply for about a year and save 50 euros.” Okay, that sounds more interesting than the freezer full of pizza.
Hunting for discounts
It is impossible to say whether there is a difference in personality between people who hunt for discounts and people who seem to have a blind spot for them, according to consumer psychologist Patrick Wessels. He sees a different mechanism: “If you find an interesting discount a few times and buy something at a lower price, it gives you a kick, and that then stimulates you to do it again, and again, so that you gradually get a better deal. builds competence in discount scoring. You can then share that competence with others, which in turn is good for your social connection. It’s a kind of feedback loop that makes you happy. Receiving the discount in itself is a reward, and receiving the appreciation from the environment or like-minded people for that is extra rewarding. And it also saves you money, so feel free to call it a useful hobby.”
It’s exactly what I see on the Facebook group Promojagers. This is a gathering place for all those who are looking for and finding discounts. There I see how discount hunting can become a contagious game. I get bitten by what I see passing by: Airpods from Apple, a stay at Slow Cabins, a cheap evening at Kruidvat. It also feels a bit like a competition, with everyone trying to find the best deal and get the most likes. “Yes,” says Patrick Wessels, “that competition aspect is certainly there. Against each other, but also against the stores, and that also creates a bond: us together against the stores that make too much profit and charge us too much.” Because apart from that hunting aspect, there is of course also the reality of the rising cost of life and there are more and more people for whom discounts are essential to survive the month.
And who doesn’t? There may be several reasons for this, says Wessels: “It doesn’t fit my image, I don’t find it interesting to be involved in that, I’m too busy.” I personally see a few more: instant thinking – why buy two if you only need one now? – and lack of space, for example. Or buy time: the time, energy and mental space you save by not sifting through discounts can also be worth a few euros.
You can find more thoughts on life on the blog From the heart.
[16:31] Dear Van de Velde
