Thu 13 December 2007 - Buy, buy, buy!
A comment on a very funny Scott Adams’ post about a Las Vegas casino sucking money out of his wallet led me to this fascinating post about casino design. In turn, some of the comments there are very interesting too.
It reminds me a bit of supermarket design. How things like milk (that you might come in for regularly) are always at the back, so you have to walk past everything else to get to them… and keep looking elsewhere to find eggs and bread.
Safeway have 1.2 Kg “Only at Woolworths/Safeway” bulk packs of Weetbix… a great deal, sure to get you going back to them. What they don’t tell you is that Coles stocks 1.3 Kg boxes.
All part of the way that businessmen design the world to help us consumers part with our money.
That said, I try to resist all the impulse buys while grocery shopping. I tend to stick to a fairly well-defined list. I stock up on things that are on sale (including switching brands, within reason, and buying two-at-a-discount knowing one will go in the freezer), but only if I know I’ll need them.
PS. Speaking of consumption, I’ve got hold of a thing which measures electricity consumption for individual appliances. I’m going to try it soon, and see how much juice the computers/TV/microwave/etc are each burning up.