Buy Now And Save

Classic capitalist DoubleThink. "Buy"="spend" is the opposite of "save". The qualifier "now" does not change the relationship. BuyNowAndSave violates YouArentGonnaNeedIt. The fallacy of BuyNowAndSave is revealed by LazyEvaluation and similar techniques used in the JustInTime marketing that minimizes warehoused stock and lead to the market dominance of WalMart over traditional retailers.

Seriously, though - the Orwellian allusion is based on a criticism of Socialism, not Capitalism. I think anyone logical enough to follow computer programming owes it to themselves to take a careful, critical look at Capitalism and Socialism. They will find that Capitalism holds up darn well, and is the moral system to choose from. (I hope we come up with something better than both in the next couple hundred years...)

I suggest that the only proper evaluation of BuyNowAndSave is a NetPresentValue calculation. In some cases, the prospective buyer will save and other cases he or she will not. Given the customer's OpportunityCostOfCapital?, the time frame and the expected future cost, the buyer may well end up cash ahead by buying now. Regardless of whether the BuyNowAndSave is true or not, I don't see how this relates to market dominance at all. --MarkAddleman

WalMart's JustInTime inventory system saves them enough money that can be passed on to their customers in the form of reduced prices that WalMart is able to undercut the prices of their more traditional warehousing retail competitors such as K-Mart. WalMart doesn't sell better stuff, but it more efficiently identifies consumer trends and responds immediately rather than trying to predict future demand for various goods with limited success. The alternative leads to increased inventories that from time-to-time need to be deeply discounted to be cleared. Successful application of JIT has lead to WalMart's current retailing dominance.

"Buy now and save!" assumes that you have already decided to buy the product.

If you were already going to buy, say soap for instance, in the next few months, the 20% discount they're giving now (for the next 2 days) would save you money: The only requirements are that

you would have bought it anyway within a short time
the time value of money does not wipe out your savings
the price of soap wasn't going to go down even further if you waited.

But all of this ignores the largest and most major critical assumption: ...that you really were already going to buy it -- that the purchasing decision had already been made.

If you really want to pursue this in detail, look for the book "Strategy and Tactics of Pricing" ISBN 013026248X for an abundance - I mean really, really, a LOT - of carefully reasoned explanation of pricing's effect on business success.

The "buy now and save" command works subliminally on those who tend to binge, and only need the gentlest of provocations to go shopping. This is later converted to "Honey, look how much we saved!" as a pre-emptive justification.

The MadisonAvenueMentality? of advertizing eschews the more pedestrian "Please note, economies of scale have allowed us to pass a savings on to our customers on the following items ..." and requires the construction of sentences like, "Buy! Now! And! Save!" and, "Get! Yours! While! Supplies! Last!"