Buy 1, Get the shop free

Consumers today are spoilt by the sheer number of choices that are available to them in the market. From a small household item to the passenger car, we have thousands of options for each item in thousands of price bands. In a mainly consumerist soceity like India, this means that the companies will get richer and the consumers will get poorer. And from time immemorial, a popular way of attracting customers is the legendary 'free' offer. My earliest experiences of this 'free'fall are the tiny animal models that they used to give with the binaca toothpaste. I used to take more paste than that is needed to brush my small teeth to somehow finish it off and buy the next one so that I can add a new model to my collection of miniature animals. For your info, my teeth got its current yellowish appearance right from the day binaca stopped giving those animal models free. So, now you know whom to blame for my bad breath and yellow teeth. Another of my favourite free items were the tattoos supplied free with bubblegums some years back. I still remember how in 6th standard I raised quite a few eyebrows in school with that crazy tattoo of a gal on my arm. Thankfully for me, those kind of tattoos didn't survive beyond 2 days. Then, there were such bizarre free offers like 'buy a soap, get a pen free'. And that evergreen offer of 'Marry a girl. Get a child free'.

All those are out of fashion now. Now its a case of 'buy 50, get 100'. This happened last week. Me and my friend visited the brand factory here to buy a shirt for him. As we entered the shop what caught our eye was a 'buy 1, get 1 free' board. After some frantic searching, we selected 2 shirts and started walking to the billing counter. Thats when we saw the board 'buy 2, get 3 free'. WOW. We already had 2 shirts in our hand, now its only a matter of taking another 3. After one more hour, we had 5 nice looking shirts in our hand. Again we started walking to the cash counter. This time what amazed us was the 'buy 5, get 5 free' banner. Thats when we started thinking about the clever sales strategy that they've employed in the shop. They had actually made a guy who planned to buy just 1 shirt to take home 10 shirts. Yes, if he had taken those 5 shirts, he would be having 10 shirts with him. These kind of offers are irresistible to most consumers. They just go on piling up the clothes in their shopping carts as was evident from a 15 minute observation of the shoppers there. If any guy decides to go through all the offers they are giving, he may end up owning almost all the clothes in the shop. Its a clever way of luring the consumer into buying more of their products and thus cleaning up their shelves. And most of us fall for that. Anyway, in the end he controlled himself and bought only 2 shirts. So, beware when you go to shops like these next time. Buy only what you planned to buy. Don't fall flat for the seemingly awesome offers.

your crusader Praveen