Tuesday, February 20, 2007

You Ask of Coupons?

So DMK posed an interesting question;

Why don't men favor or use coupons as much as women?

And it got me thinking about the economics of coupons and how in an economic behavioral sense men and women may vary and I could only come up with a couple observations (and broad generalities so for all the anti-free speech Nazi's out there who salivate at the chance no matter how innocuous to accuse other people of sexism or racism or whatever -ism, please shut the hell up).

1. Men are less patient than women.

2. Historically men have been more industrious than women and the amount of time they'd have to spend collecting enough coupons to save $10 in groceries intuitively somehow they could have made $30, ergo why waste the time.

3. Somewhat related to #2, but more of a Darwinian/evolution approach, women have stayed at home for all these years doing the typical household tasks which coupon collecting would fall under while men are out slaying mammoth, ergo we are biologically/genetically predisposed to not want to collect coupons.

That's about the only reasons I could come up with.

I have used coupons in the past, but they literally had to fall into my lap. Or I was sitting somewhere with nothing to do, there happened to be a newspaper nearby and I just started looking for coupons. ie-I don't go looking for coupons.

I'd also be curious to see how men and women behave differently when it comes to a similar economic decision; lottery or gambling.

Is the potential savings/winnings worth the time of buying the Powerball ticket.

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