Ways to Save Money Shopping Online
Online Shopping and Dynamic Pricing. Regardless of how much and what goods and services you purchase online, there is something very important you should be aware of before you shop called dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing means that the seller changes the price of goods and services for each individual customer based on information they have gathered from data research, customer purchase histories, loyalty cards and other factors. All kinds of businesses, everything from clothing stores to travel websites, track your behavior through cookies if you haven’t disabled them and record your behavior and keep track of what you have ordered from them in the past and how much you paid for goods and services in the past. They use this information to instantly change the price of the items you see on the search results. This means that you might pay more or less for an item than another person.
For example, if you paid $20 for some item in the past at an online drugstore, but the item is now selling for $17, the website might not reveal this fact to you and list the price at $20. Online supermarkets do the same thing. If you paid $150 per night for a hotel room last year and you’re booking a room at the same hotel room this year, the hotel will charge you $150 or more even if they have lots of vacancies and could rent it to you for much less. If a website has been able to determine that you live in an upscale area, they will automatically raise the price of everything on the website without your knowledge. If you visit their website using an Apple product rather than Microsoft Windows, they might charge you more because the theory is that people who own Apple products will spend more than those who don’t.
Companies also use dynamic pricing to compete with each other and stay at the top of search results with the lowest price. This means that prices for products can change ten times a day. The cell phone you purchased at 1 p.m. for $200 might be selling for $180 at 2 p.m. The only way you can avoid being a victim of price discrimination is to use an aggregate website that gathers information about prices from other websites and tells you who has the cheapest price. Good aggregate websites are PriceGrabber.com, Nextag.com and MySupermarket.com.
Custom Search
Custom Search
Ways to Save Money
Saving Money with Sales
Budgeting Calculators
Retail vs. The Internet. You should also be aware that items found online are not necessarily cheaper than they are in retail stores. Research has found that often you can buy an item cheaper in the retail store than at the retailer’s website. People forget to figure in the cost of shipping when they order something online, which could erase any discount. Use the RedLaser app to compare retail and online prices.
Top Holidays for Online Shopping. You might think that the Christmas season is the best time to shop online for bargains, but research has found that this is not true. The top day for online shopping is Labor Day followed closely by Columbus Day, New Year’s Day, and Independence Day.
Shop online on Tuesdays. Although Cyber Monday is the Internet’s biggest shopping day of the year and offers the biggest bargains, research has found that most people find the biggest bargains online by shopping on Tuesdays, with the average savings being about 5 percent. Certain items tend to be on sale certain days of the week. For example, people often find the best deals on jewelry on Fridays and the best deals on shoes on Wednesdays.
Flash Sales. Almost every retailer offers instant, unadvertised bargains to customers called “flash” sales. Any online retailer can wave a 50% off offer in front of you at any time to lure you in. For example, Amazon.com has a daily deal in its “Gold Box” program where one can buy electronics, video games and such. These deals are available only for a short time, often for as little as one or two hours. Make sure the sale price is really a bargain and not just hype before you buy by comparing prices online at websites such as PriceGrabber.com. Also, make sure you understand beforehand whether or not you can get a refund, since some flash sales, particularly travel-related, are final. There are dozens of flash sale websites out there. Below is a sampling of a few:
- Amazon.com’s flash sale site is MyHabit.com and offers fashion and home-related items
- Gilt.com is one of the most well-known flash sale sites offering deals on beauty and fashion. It now operates GiltCity.com, a flash site for deals in your area, and GiltTaste.com, a food-related site.
- Find deals on fashion and beauty related products at HaulerDeals.com or Modnique.com
- Find huge discounts on last season’s fashions at TheOutnet.com
- Find flash sales in your area at ScoutMob.com
- Find travel and hotel-related offers at EveryLodge.com
- Find bargains on various items at Sellout.woot.com
