HOW WE BUY (Or How We Decide As Couples)

There are three criteria that persons use in deciding what to buy on any item: Quality, economy, and aesthetics. Take clothes for example. When you buy pants or a sweater, or what ever. Are you most concerned about how long it will wear, or how attractive it is, or how much it will cost? Certainly there is usually a combination of interests in the three criteria. For some persons, one will dominate where as for another person a different one will be most important. It will also depend on what you are buying. If a woman is buying a dress, how it looks is dominate usually with durability and cost secondarily. If a man is buying work pants, durability ranks above attractiveness usually, with cost also important. But buying a car may find a couple divided on what to buy: to buy something economical to use, or in fashion? Or does the record of repairs of such a model matter, or the present condition of the car matter a lot?

Which criteria prevails or dominates is also dependent greatly on parental influence and personal interests and probably often gender. If your parents came through the Great Depression and you grew up under that mentality and memory, economy may be very important in most things. Perhaps initial costs may be more important than durability as survival in the short run was the focus in their day. Aesthetics had little influence in those days of practical survival.

Economics has another influence when there is plenty of money around. Sufficiency allows for cultivation of aesthetics. For example, when there is money lying around, one can buy tasty food (aesthetics) beyond practical nutrition, (quality). One can also excel in various arts of music, entertainment, and art. Here durability technological quality may be as important as aesthetics if money is no problem.

From these examples, it is easy to see why a husband and wife may have difficulty in shopping together. There are of course gender differences in styles of shopping: the wife is likely to shop aesthetically,  while the man will cling to his purse [economy] except when he wants to buy something. Window shopping may be appealing to a woman’s aesthetic interests, but when she likes something, costs may appear to take back seat to the husband who may not have the same aesthetic taste or interest. The wife may want to buy something for him also for which he senses no need as he measures needs by still durable materials in his possessions, and not as much by now nice something new may be. However gender generalities are not consistent.

It is likely that some couples may compromise buying in order to “keep peace in the family.” The husband may be content to spend more on eye glass frames and his preference on durability may take back seat to her aesthetics. She may also allow him to buy used clothes at Goodwill- if they don’t look too bad by her tastes, although she would like him to buy new stuff. Yet sometimes compromises are not that simple if they hold different criteria strongly. If he feels their budget is strained, he may object strongly to her buying something for aesthetics sake beyond quality and necessity. For the woman, necessity may be spelled psychological- the need to do something for her self, which to the husband may be a category incomprehensible. Then the strength of wills may prevail before a decision is made. It helps to be understanding.