Written by Brook Schaaf

I just wrapped up my family vacation to four national parks (Olympic, Rainier, North Cascades) with a multi-day backpacking trip in the fourth, Glacier National Park. 

For those interested, my friends entered at Chief Mountain and I rendezvoused with them at the southern end of Waterton Lake, which meant a drive through Canada and a one-way ferry boat ride—about my grandest ever start at a trailhead. We hiked three days out, exiting at Bowman Lake. Wife graciously picked us all up in our rental passenger van (something she may have regretted after twenty-plus bumpy dirt-road miles). We celebrated with huckleberry treats, wondering if perhaps they aren’t really locally rebranded blueberries.

For those unfamiliar, on a backpacking trip, you basically hike, filter water, eat, and chat. Naturally, I asked about the group’s online shopping habits and got some interesting, varied responses. One told me that he always searches for coupons but only within a certain set of merchants, and he would not and could not be bothered to install a browser extension. An example was a periodic bulk purchase of Dr. Bronner’s soap, which he knows he can get for three dollars and change for a bar instead of five and change.

Another puts something in his shopping cart and just waits twenty minutes to see if a discount pops up. Another goes out of his way to use an extension, many burner emails from Temp Mail, and the cart abandonment trick (waiting for an email with a discount a few days later). There was some concern and consternation expressed over dynamic pricing proposals, in particular over Delta’s planned AI pricing based on customer behaviors.

It was compelling to see these in the wild, as it were. Now, a handful of forty-something guys is hardly representative of all e-commerce online or even all forty-something men. In contemplation of this, it got me to wondering—just what percentage of shoppers will take what pains to save money on what kind of items? 

If you know of any resources, please drop me a line. I’m planning to follow the trail.

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