Have you ever noticed what goes on in your mind before buying something? I am going to talk about how to exactly think while making any purchase decision. You might already know about these; just giving it a structure so that it becomes easier to remember and apply.
These models could be applied to any kind of purchase you do — a car, a home, a phone or a piece of cloth. I am extensively using Issue Trees to break things down.
Let’s answer the question — why are you purchasing something?
A clear definition of the motive of purchase becomes necessary to evaluate whether or not the purchase is worth it. It should also comes in handy when there’s a choice between purchasing X or Y; or to figure out the relative priority w.r.t. multiple purchases which could help us with deciding what to go for first.
There could be three motives to it:
Now breaking down each of these, one by one:
Purchasing for usage / consumption — breakdown
As you look at it, the clearer is our purchase reason and the ROI we get from it, the better our purchase decisions could get.
Some situations which don’t let us think through —
“Wants” v/s “Needs” Framework:
Here’s another framework which could be used to evaluate whether you truly ‘need’ something:
Wants vs Needs
This is good framework to gauge the urgency of buying something based on its utility [a product of Frequency of use and value derived per use].