Saturday, August 11, 2018

Economics in real life

Economics is everywhere if one has the vision to see it. Our lives are surrounded by various economics principals that result in our purchasing or selling behaviour. These economic principles are in use for a variety of reasons let's take a look at some of them and find out how are they applied in our real life.

1.  People face trade-off
There is nothing free in this world. To get something one must forego something in return. It is one of the hardest challenges any customer face while making a decision regarding a product.
For example:
Every day a commuter has to trade the luxury of a car for saving money and travel by bus.
Or
the luxury of sleep vs. attendance of a class in a college.

2.  People Respond to incentives
Have you ever came across a sales advertisement in a newspaper or TV showing huge discounts? this is known as incentives which lure customers to buy something by providing rewards. As human are very responsive to incentives such as price drop or buy one get one free(BOGOF). The principle behind this is called People Respond to incentives.
let's take some examples
The "Big billion day sale" is a campaign by Flipkart which offered various products for sale on their e-commerce website with huge discounts. This provided a great incentive to the consumers for purchasing items that they wanted.

"Sabse Sasata Din" is a campaign run by Big Bazar from 2006 where they provide massive discounts to attract customers. During 2006 when this campaign started there was a huge response from the customers as they achieved a sale figure of 30 Crore in a single day( source: "It happened in India" by Kishor Biyani)

3.Utility concept
Internet you can watch any amount of videos you want on Youtube. They have the largest collection of videos from segments of Education to Entertainment. You get entertained watching such videos which provide you with a certain level of satisfaction. This satisfaction that you acquire from watching videos is known as Utility.
Let's take another example
In Dominos they have an affordable segment called PizzaMania which is priced relatively less compared to their rest of the menu. Now when you consume a pizza from the PizzaMania segment you feel a certain level of satisfaction as the taste is also good and the price is relatively low.
 In economic terms, Utility means the satisfaction that a person acquires from their consumption activity.
There are some assumptions to this concept such as:
1. Taste and preference remain fixed which plays a major role in the decision making.
2. People allocate their income to maximise their satisfaction of total utility.
Some terms related to this concept
TU- Total Utility( total amount of satisfaction achieved)
MU- Marginal Utility( additional unit of satisfaction achieved for consumption of an extra unit of product)

4.The principle of Diminishing Marginal Utility
So but now you know what does Utility means. But, does the level of satisfaction remains the same?
Let's go ahead with the example of Youtube again. When you watch a trailer video of a movie on youtube for the first time you get excited about the movie, you enjoy the trailer and derive a certain level of satisfaction. But, the next time when you watch that video do you still feel the same level of satisfaction? By this time, you know what is in the trailer so your satisfaction falls down a little.
What is your satisfaction level when you eat your second pizza in Dominos? It's not like the first pizza you had. Right?
This phenomenon is known as the law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. As you consume more of a certain product your level of satisfaction decreases with the extra additional unit of product. You do not derive the same level of satisfaction that you did from the last video you watched or the last pizza you had.
Characteristics of Diminishing Marginal Utility
1.The more of a good that one obtains in a specific period of time, the less the additional utility derived from an additional unit of the good.
2. Utility diminishes over time- the shorter the time period, the more quickly the level of satisfaction of additional unit decreases
3. Consumers are not identical, so the rate at which such decline happens differs across consumers.

5. Rational Behaviour
A consumer is said to be rational when they make decisions based on reasons rather than emotions. this behavioural trait is what makes a consumer make a decision regarding buying a certain product or not. The rational behaviour of a consumer is seen is various scenarios such as:
People buying a fitness band just to check the steps they walk every day.
Purchasing of gold with the reason of it is a good investment.

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