As a quick glance through the articles surrounding this one will show, these days, you’re unlikely to find an even halfway savvy consumer buying anything without looking around a little online first. Well, except for e-bay auction items, maybe. In fact, I just bought a crummy camera posing as a much better one on e-bay, and was so caught up in a small bidding war and in really wanting to get something good for cheap that I didn’t even look the thing up before entering the winning bid. But that’s different—I’m not an even halfway savvy consumer. Maybe a quarterway savvy, but that’s about it. I’m talking here about people who buy smart.
Except here’s the thing: what does it mean to buy smart, actually? I’m not comparison shopping is bad—not at all—but I do want to suggest that even a habit of comparison shopping doesn’t guarantee the "best buy." Moreover, I suspect that doing all one’s comparison shopping online actually makes finding the "best buy" less likely, especially if we really stop to think about what we mean by the "best buy." Following, a personal anecdote to draw out the points I hope to make:
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