Buying in Quantity

Since the advent of stores like Costco and others, regular people have been able to have access to literally unbeatable prices for everyday items. True, they have to buy in bulk, but for most people who have family and compose the main body of customers that frequent these stores, it simply make things easier.

I have nothing but full respect to the people who came up with the concept of selling bulk to regular consumers. It clearly was an idea that rightly earners the title of "a billion dollar idea" but what is still a curiosity to me, and perhaps some of the economist who might be reading this will share their thoughts with me, but why have people not adapted this idea to the its full extent?

What I'm talking about is the lack of consumer initiative when it comes to opportunities of saving considerable amounts of money in exchange for buying in bulk. Recently, online web sites have been trying to create an environment were people can join together to get better deals on products that they would not be able to get if they were buying solo. Sites like groupon are doing good business for themselves but at the same time I strongly suspect that most people are not taking advantage of these bulk discount deals.

I for one, think that the reservations on the part of consumers is that they don't what to deal with the hassle of haggling with sellers and negotiating with partner buyers. But all of these very interesting questions and observations are great topic in their own rite, but this all relates to me in a very personal, not to mention financial, way.

I am a sales person for an online websites that sell mannequins. We have an offer were if you bus two mannequins you get the third one half off. Now I know that that might not sound like a great deal but what you should know is that almost every person or store that buys one mannequin will end up buying anther one or two within the year! Which means that our deal is in almost all cases going to save our customers money, but for some reason that I hope one of you could explain, they just don't go for it. It could very well be that they don't want to spend the money at that time, but I simply does not make sense if it is going to be cheaper in the long run. Someone please explain.

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