I understand that we are now into the season in which we are supposed to be feverishly buying stuff for Christmas. We have this thing called Black Friday, when apparently we are supposed to hit the stores and to compete with all the other feverish shoppers in getting the best deals. We didn't have a Black Friday back in the day, and it all strongly tempts me to boycott the whole thing. On Black Friday, I like to stay away from the stores, and to keep on enjoying Thanksgiving. I'll shop later, and if all the great deals are gone by then, then so be it! I notice that a few advertisers are pushing the idea that in their store "It's Black Friday all week long!"
I have a love/hate relationship with the ads, as they appear on television. I love to watch them, not to whet my interest in buying stuff, but as a form of entertainment, and to ponder the logic by which they try to persuade us to buy stuff. I hate them because of their constant appeals to our vanity, and because of their "that don't make good sense" reasonings which are presented as though they make perfect sense.
One ad that I have been seeing lately invites us to come in and buy our new bedroom suite at this store, indicating that here we will save so much on our bedroom suite that we will most likely be able to buy a whole house-full of furniture. This is the assumption that we come in with enough money to buy the bedroom outfit for the usual "full" price, so if we can get it for less, we will have all this money left over to spend on other things. Advertising these days seems to be training us to think in terms of how much we are saving as we buy things, not what we are spending; and the suggestion is that the more we buy the more we save. The idea seems to be that shopping is as much about achieving bargains as it is about obtaining things we need, and if we overspend our budget it is OK because we can't turn down an opportunity to get an unbelievably great deal.
Last year at this time, we had a car ad featuring two ladies who were discussing their experiences of shopping on Black Friday. One had gotten up really early, missed sleep and had wrestled all day with the crowds, arriving home disheveled but pleased that she had saved hundreds on her parcels. To that, the other lady says she slept in, got a good night's sleep, but still saved thousands, and the camera then pans to her gleaming new GM car. This year, I'm seeing almost the duplicate of that ad, but this year it features two guys, and the smart guy got a new GM SUV rather than a car. So, why beat yourself up shopping at all the stores and saving only a few hundred dollars, when you can just sashay over to your car dealer, get that new vehicle, and come home convinced that you just saved thousands!? I'll have to admit that I don't get the logic of this one. The guy who went to the stores supposedly spent a thousand dollars or so buying stuff he needed, maybe Christmas presents for his family, and has come home satisfied that he saved money while doing so. The other guy went to the car dealer, spent 45 thousand on a car that they told him was worth 52 thousand, so he comes back home satisfied with himself that he dodged all the hassle and still saved thousands. So the first guy was a dummy, right? I still don't get it!?
Another line I'm hearing in ads today is what I will call the "No Haggling Buying." Come in to our car dealership and we'll give you our great deal, no haggling. You just come in, sign the papers, pay what we ask for the car, and drive it away with our assurance that you just got special treatment, no haggling, and you are really clever for shopping with us. We people who come from the old days have difficulty in understanding how "no haggling" is good. We grew up with the idea that car salesmen will nearly always quote you a higher price than the price they might eventually accept, so the wise buyer goes to the dealer with the idea of negotiating a price that both can agree on. To us old-timers, no haggling buying says that the salesman won't negotiate price with us. We are to just pay what we are told is a great price, hush up, take our car home, and start making payments, because we are really clever to come in so they can give us this great deal.
I am seeing ads these days which seem to suggest that we can't really enjoy staying at a great hotel unless we are sure we are getting the best price. So, I guess if we stay at a place and we think we enjoy it, but then later discover that we could have stayed at this other place for a really great bargain, then we can no longer think that we enjoyed our vacation at the first place. Also some ads seem to suggest that it makes no sense to buy a new car until we are sure that we are getting a really great deal. And, the way we figure out if we are getting a really great deal is to consult a website which knows all, like Trucar, and rely on them to tell us where to find the really great deal. I guess we are just dummies if we want to go first to our handy-dandy usual car dealer and see if we can't work out something satisfactory there.
•••
Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 12/02/2015