01.10.10

Group Buying and Social Media and Dog Poop Bags…

Posted in Green Ideas, Uncategorized at 3:34 pm by Administrator

In today’s Sun Sentinel newspaper, writer Seth Liss wrote a great article on group buying and its popularity growth with Social Media. It makes sense really and we have wrote about that topic on this blog previously. Check out the article here on the Sun Sentinel Website.

One of the areas that was not explored in the article which largely focused on the price negotiation, is the shipping costs. In general, the cost of shipping represents 20% of the price of an item, but buying in bulk as a group makes alot of sense if only due to the offsetting cost of shipping.

I use biodegradable dog poop bags as an example. These dog poop bags sell for $4.99/box and the shipping cost for 1 box in nearly 100% of that, or $5.00. Surely that can’t be right? But it is the cost of shipping itself that has components not related to the weight of the item, but rather the packaging and administration of that item. I bought some used books from Barnes and Noble over the holidays with a gift card I received. The books were only $1.99, the shipping cost, $3.99($2.84 postage, the balance handling charges) is another good example.

Anyway, back to the dog poop bags. If you and your friends are dog owners, you could buy an entire case of these, 12 boxes, which only cost $4.74/box when purchased by the case, and the shipping cost is only $9.97.

So lets do the math on this. If 12 individuals buy 1 box of dog poop bags at $4.99 per box and $5.00 for shipping, their unit cost to purchase is $9.99 and as a group of individual buyers, the cost is $119.88. Ouch! If this same group of individuals bought as a group a full case which is already discounted to $56.99 per case of biodegradable dog poop bags, add $9.97 for shipping, the total cost is $66.96 or a unit cost of $5.58. I am not a math genius, but I think that group buying when you take shipping costs into account, would give the buyer a 45% discount. Now that is power.

My hat is off to Seth Liss and the Sun Sentinel for their article. Don’t forget, you don’t need to employ a group buying website to get great discounts. Often, what you need to do is look at your circle of friends and find the similarities. You can generally contact a website owner directly through their emails or phone numbers and negotiate, or, just comparatively look at the shipping costs.

till next time….

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