On a Thanksgiving holiday, I find myself at Richmond Centre, shopping around when I knew I should at home studying for my upcoming midterms.
One of the stores that I entered was Bath and Body Works. Although I usually head straight to the corner to smell those scent candles for my own enjoyment, I am always certain there would be a sales person as an obstruction in my path. Indeed, I was right again – her overly practiced greeting of “Hi there! If you have anything that you need help with, my name is ___.” had me murmur an automatic “Thanks, but I’m just looking around” to her friendly offer of assistance.
Now, I usually do not show much interest in the products when I am only walking around the mall. But I am afraid today was an exception. Enticing seasonal scents like Autumn Leaves had me want to bring the smell home and liven up my boring home with the crispy fall season. When I decided to pick up one of the packages, the sales person magically appeared at that first second of interest and tried convincing me to choose the biggest package of the shelf – a box with 4 scent bulbs of the same scent. She even exclaimed, “it is 50% off its original sale price! Quite the deal here!”
* CHECKMATE *
Chloe, in her blog, mentioned about the supposed “chess game” that marketers play during each transaction with the consumer. As she lived to tell her personal checkmate experience, I must agree with her that it is indeed difficult to reject such a favourable offer that has so effortlessly appeared right in front of us. However, I actually find it even harder to surrender ourselves to the marketer’s hands and admit to losing! As a weak pawn, not only would we be taking money out of my own pocket for the superior, but for myself I would also be defeating my own initial purpose for a mere “browsing around” and my sense of morale as a hard-to-get customer.
So, in the end, alike Chloe’s, I just left the store and the challenging game overall. Besides, my home does not smell that horrible anyways…