the "i found it" mindset of consumers

So I know that its technically sales, but they call themselves telemarketers and this is a marketing blog so I think its worth a mention.

This afternoon I received a phone call from a man offering me some "great deals on holiday packages". Its unfortunate that the bulk of the people hired to do this work are from the sub-continent as I have it on good authority that a lot of legitimate call centres these days have an unofficial policy of not hiring Indians due to the negative connotations the accent arouses in customers, but everyone needs to make a living..

The "telemarketer" spent the next 30Min's on the phone trying to tell me that the package deals he was offering were "excellent value", unfortunately being that I had an open browser in front of me at the time, I was able to check the REAL prices of the hotels in question rather than just taking his word for it that I was getting "$150 worth of free accommodation". After a long discussion I declined his offer at which time he started swearing at me about how I had kept him on the phone for $30Min's and wasted his time (he failed to see the irony in this statement) before I eventually congratulated him on his persistence and hung up the phone.

Why is this in anyway blog worthy information you ask? Well let me try and explain..

A site like wotif.com or lastminute.com are great for travelers, because these days the under 30 market spend a good deal of time prior to travel researching accommodation/etc on the Internet before they head off to a far away land. The creators of these sites (and sites like them) understand the mindset of the modern day traveler and have created a service that lets the customer FIND the hotel (who are anctiously trying to fill empty rooms at the last minute)
themselves. People like finding these deals, they love telling their friends about how they stayed in the middle of Sydney in a 5 star hotel for $99, the sites and the hotels hardly have to market themselves at all as happy customers just keep pumping referrals though to their site.

I'm sure that the man I spoke to will sell a couple of holiday packages today, he was very persistent after all, but its unlikely that the customers will leave the transaction feeling as though "they found" a great deal (if in fact it even is a great deal). Why? Because people love to FIND a bargain. The same mindset that will see a customer spend hours rummaging though the "last season/seconds/out of stock" box at the back of a store hoping to find that ridiculously discounted garment also takes place when tracking down a great price for an item on the Internet (be it hotels or otherwise). Someone once said "people don't value something that comes to them easily" and i think this is true in the case of marketing. If a consumer feels as though they have had to put in a little effort to get the great value, they will treasure this far more.