4. Don’t price match
You might have already noticed that smaller competitive businesses are getting swallowed up or squashed out by the big players with deep pockets. Price matching helps this along by allowing clever, pseudo competitive players to take a small hit on an individual sale to snatch the opportunity from the business that really was fighting the competitive fight. If you want an example, take a look at Bunnings. Its catch cry is ‘lowest prices guaranteed’. So if you show the hardware chain a lower price on, say, a particular shovel, it’ll beat it – by just enough and subject to some terms and conditions. The moment they do that, Bunnings knows it doesn’t have the lowest price on that shovel, but it doesn’t change its retail price across all stores for that shovel, just the one it sells to you. So the shop that was on the front foot to win your business misses out on the sale and there are only so many times a business can do that.
If you want the best deal, take it when you find it and kiss the lazy price matchers goodbye, otherwise the next time you need a loan, you might not have as much choice or competition as you do today.