C W Burfle posted:I mentioned to the manager of my favorite chain grocery that lots of people were using their phones to "price compare" and he said it's killing his business.
I've been doing the majority of the food shopping in my family for over thirty years. A few years ago, maybe 5 or so, I noticed a change in how most folks shopped. More couples shopping together. More people checking labels, doing price comparisons, using coupons, and referencing sales information. Most importantly, more terse expressions on peoples faces.
As most of us have noticed, the price of food gets jacked up at every excuse, like fuel costs, but never drop back down when fuel costs fall.
The latest trick seems to be using the same size packaging, but putting less inside.
So who can blame people for comparison shopping?
And maybe this is one of the reasons people have less time/money for trains.
It takes time to comparison shop and go to multiple stores.
I think perhaps the reason why more people comparison shop and use coupons these days is there simply are more bills to pay than there were in the '40s and '50s not to mention that living costs have risen necessitating that many families must have both parents work to have a nice life style. I grew up in the '70s and we were lucky my father had a good enough job that my mother could be a stay at home mom. Today's families have a cable bill, an internet bill, a cell phone bill for both mom and dad, a bill for a home security system (maybe not everyone but some do) , and don't forget car repair/maintenance bills (much less people repair/maintain their own cars as they did back in the day) and let's not forget credit card debt which did exist in the '70s but it was nothing like it is today. It just seems to me that there are so many more recurring bills today than there were when I was growing up.
