He bought two cans of tomato sauce, just to be safe. Multiply that across thousands of households every day, and you have an economics problem worth understanding.
I notice the YouGov poll asks about who does what, and who enjoys what, but not whether the respondents even cared about that particular chore getting done at all. "Women do more dusting" is meaningless if they're the only ones who care about dust.
To be fair, I do still dust when it starts to get ... unignorable. But I do wonder how much the gender divide on "I don't care about that particular chore" factors in.
I spend a fair bit of my time in an apartment where I'm responsible for the household tasks. I'm not super-efficient because I place a high value on my time (which I then spend writing Substack comments). With online shopping, it's pretty easy to check for specials.
I once met with a student lamenting the cost of groceries last year, but I am the primary grocery shopper in this household and felt her numbers were off some. It turns out that she was doing all her grocery shopping on DoorDash and was paying 1-2 markups on most items without realizing what the actual price was.
We had a nice long conversation about how she can order online directly from the supermarket and save herself A LOT of money.
Direct delivery from supermarkets (with a small delivery charge, say $10) seems to be much less common in the US than in Oz. There are now some companies offering near-instant deliveries of small grocery orders. But that's a niche.
It's quite common in the UK & the Netherlands but even then as the house shopper I mistrust it, latgely because when I've used I get a lot of goods near expiry date, which complicates house logistics.
Consumer optimization is difficult to achieve if you are being shopped for instead of the one doing the shopping. If I don't know what your marginal utility is for an item, I am bound to buy the wrong item, too many or too few of the item, or the wrong brand. I find shopping with another person, e.g. spouse, greatly complicates the implicit math. I do not try to achieve marginal utility per dollar begin equal across all items explicitly, but I have been grocery shopping enough decades that it is implicitly in my brain as buy things. Adding another person's utility adds too much complexity for it to 1) be comfortable, 2) be accurate (to my limited way of thinking). This is the movie dilemma where you try to maximize the combined marginal utility per dollar, or you just don't care about the other person's opinion and you force your choice on them. Grocery shopping for another person is a way of exerting control and optimizing for you rather than the group.
I'm definitely not optimizing, but that's mostly because I probably purchase too many new snacks that I think sound tasty, or I think my partner would like them.
They end up sitting in the cabinet for a few months before we eventually throw them out and wonder why we ever bought them.
As the singular inelastic shopper since 2020 (probably earlier, but at least then), the thought never crossed my mind that my bi-weekly $150 trip was different than my $125 trip simply due to price swings. The products I buy are usually quite similar though every now and again we'll need something less perishable that finally needs to be replaced, and I always just assumed those were the differences. I'll have to check now to see how my usual products start swinging.
I notice the YouGov poll asks about who does what, and who enjoys what, but not whether the respondents even cared about that particular chore getting done at all. "Women do more dusting" is meaningless if they're the only ones who care about dust.
I must admit, I thought dusting had gone out along with ironing.
To be fair, I do still dust when it starts to get ... unignorable. But I do wonder how much the gender divide on "I don't care about that particular chore" factors in.
I spend a fair bit of my time in an apartment where I'm responsible for the household tasks. I'm not super-efficient because I place a high value on my time (which I then spend writing Substack comments). With online shopping, it's pretty easy to check for specials.
But you have to be careful even then. The big supermarkets here in Oz are in a lot of trouble because of a sneaky way of raising prices they have long adopted. When they know an increase is coming, they jack the prices up a lot (the canny shoppers notice and stop buying) wait a prescribed time like 30 days, then partially roll back the increase and advertise "Down, down!". I have some more thoughts on this here https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2026/feb/19/coles-shameless-down-down-promotions-have-been-exposed-so-why-arent-they-even-trying-to-rebuilt-trust
I once met with a student lamenting the cost of groceries last year, but I am the primary grocery shopper in this household and felt her numbers were off some. It turns out that she was doing all her grocery shopping on DoorDash and was paying 1-2 markups on most items without realizing what the actual price was.
We had a nice long conversation about how she can order online directly from the supermarket and save herself A LOT of money.
Direct delivery from supermarkets (with a small delivery charge, say $10) seems to be much less common in the US than in Oz. There are now some companies offering near-instant deliveries of small grocery orders. But that's a niche.
It's quite common in the UK & the Netherlands but even then as the house shopper I mistrust it, latgely because when I've used I get a lot of goods near expiry date, which complicates house logistics.
Consumer optimization is difficult to achieve if you are being shopped for instead of the one doing the shopping. If I don't know what your marginal utility is for an item, I am bound to buy the wrong item, too many or too few of the item, or the wrong brand. I find shopping with another person, e.g. spouse, greatly complicates the implicit math. I do not try to achieve marginal utility per dollar begin equal across all items explicitly, but I have been grocery shopping enough decades that it is implicitly in my brain as buy things. Adding another person's utility adds too much complexity for it to 1) be comfortable, 2) be accurate (to my limited way of thinking). This is the movie dilemma where you try to maximize the combined marginal utility per dollar, or you just don't care about the other person's opinion and you force your choice on them. Grocery shopping for another person is a way of exerting control and optimizing for you rather than the group.
I'm definitely not optimizing, but that's mostly because I probably purchase too many new snacks that I think sound tasty, or I think my partner would like them.
They end up sitting in the cabinet for a few months before we eventually throw them out and wonder why we ever bought them.
As the singular inelastic shopper since 2020 (probably earlier, but at least then), the thought never crossed my mind that my bi-weekly $150 trip was different than my $125 trip simply due to price swings. The products I buy are usually quite similar though every now and again we'll need something less perishable that finally needs to be replaced, and I always just assumed those were the differences. I'll have to check now to see how my usual products start swinging.
I know I’m guilty of not checking the “per ounce” tags when I’m in a rush.
"Inexperience has a price. It’s just usually someone else who pays it."
Surely not. It is the inexperienced shoppers who pay the price for their inexperience.