I asked my daughter if Petco had sale ads, and she said, “Nope.” I asked her if GameStop had sale ads and she replied, “What would they sell?” Suggesting, of course, that everything at GameStop has gone digital except for the “merch,” which by its very impulse-buy nature, never goes on sale.
Welcome to the new world. Show of hands, who still gets the newspaper? Who still listens to the radio? If you answered yes to any of these, you’re probably at least 50 years old.
It’s an interesting question these days. The only source of printed advertisements here in Hawaii seems to be MidWeek, a free weekly tabloid delivered to mailboxes. As I’ve alluded to in other posts, I hardly “shop on sale,” as we would have twenty years ago. Rather, I show up at the store, then go on a treasure hunt eagerly scanning QR codes and giving away my personal information in the hopes of saving a buck or two.
It seems, when we shop, we behave through habit and not any daily deal. If we believe that store A is more likely to have better prices, we head there rather than spend time futilely searching for the “best price.” If we shop for the best price, it’s probably through something like Google’s shopping.google.com which scours the internet for the best price nearest us.
If you’re Gen Z, you may rely on influencers to do your screening. As a parent of a Gen Z, nothing could be more frightening. The latest fear from The New York Times centers around Zyn, a nicotine pouch being marketed to youth. In an opinion piece entitled, “Our Kids are Living in a Different Digital World,” author Emily Dreyfuss raises the alarm over influencers broad reach which is beyond the scope of ordinary governments to control.
I’ve always subscribed to the belief that nothing is really better or worse, just different. It’s our responsibility to address the different in a way that raises conscious awareness: the element that makes us uniquely human and not robotic.
Bottom line, talk to your kids. Know what they’re doing. And, in the absence of ad flyers, let them do the internet scouring for you — they’re just better at it.