While walking through the mall today it was actually very busy still since a lot of places were still having boxing week sales. Even for people who simply wanted to get basic necessities such as groceries would have to go through all the crowds. One thing that caught my attention is that while going into the mall I heard this person who was exiting made a comment to his friend that there is no way it was worth buying an item that was on sale if he had to wait so long due to the line ups.
I am not exactly sure how big of a savings the person would have gotten. But it does make you think how much savings do you need for a product to justify staying in a lineup for say one hour? In some cases people would say $5 is enough and others would say it needs to be at least $10. Then again, many times people line up all night and skip work to save say $80 where people would then say you technically lost more money by not going to work.
I think for myself it’s more about if I really want that product where lining up is actually more for the potentially fun experience of maybe meeting other enthusiasts. I wouldn’t line up for an hour to save one dollar as an example. But generally speaking if you were saving about $20 that feels like a pretty decent amount if you actually wanted the product. The less inclined I was to actually get it in the first place the more I would expect to save. But it is interesting to see more people calculate their time as part of the whole one saving factor as well.