Post purchase dissonance

Post-Purchase-Dissonance by my friend XiangRong http://blogs.ubc.ca/tonyteng/2010/10/07/post-purchase-dissonance/

He made a good comment on the system here in Canada. The returning policy in most shops actually speed up the decision process of purchasing as consumers are psychologically less worrying about making a wrong decision. They still have a short period to consider if the value really match the price.

The pros is that users may ended up buying their products since they thought they still have many days to revert their decision. However most of them did not really consider the opportunity costs involved. They did not realise that returning the products actually takes time as well as transport costs. So, many ended up not returning.

It is interesting to note that the newest Sony Vaio laptop E series are actually selling good in today's saturated laptop markets. I ascribe all success to the series' striking designs and I did fall for it and bought one. However, I found it annoying when sony soon came up with E2 series, and then E3 series and who knows how shortly will the next model to be released.

Slowly they added in new colour as well as better specification. It's is normal to think that sony has actually fooled the consumers if given equal price since it makes the buyers to think that their products have depreciated in value in such a short time..However, it's smart of Sony to actually not changing the appearance at all, other than some new colours. The new series are actually priced higher than those older model. So it makes the previous buyers to think that their laptops' price to value ratio are still similar to that of the newly released E series. So buying sony's products seem to have slow depreciation. It thus solves, in certain extent, the post purchase dissonance for consumers even with new and faster models coming out in just short while.

Sony's E series laptop did stand out among the others due its unprecedented striking designs and colours. With successful pricing, Sony will definitely grab a large share of today's laptop market.