In Marketing
In a business and marketing context, "buyer's remorse" is the concept of regretting a purchase after buying it. From a business perspective, the problem with "buyer's remorse" is that a consumer's fear of regretting having made a purchase may influence them to delay or avoid making these major purchases, which can reduce the sales of companies selling these products. Customers' fears of ending up with "buyer's remorse" is typically much greater for expensive purchases, such as appliances, cars, and houses. Customers' fears range from the mild worry that the item in question may not meet all of their needs (or their families' needs) to the fear that they will end up buying a mechanically or structurally unsound product. To allay consumers' fears, and encourage them to make "big ticket" purchases, companies have used a variety of techniques, such as offering "try-before-you-buy" programs, warranties, money-back guarantees, and "30-day exchange" programs.
"Try-before-you-buy" programs range from relatively short trials, as in the case of 30-minute test drives in the automobile market, to several-week loans for other types of products. With high-end home audio products and pro-level musical instruments, the qualities of these expensive products are very subtle and hard to assess; a customer is not able to determine if a $3000 loudspeaker or a $30,000 violin has the sound or tone that they subjectively prefer merely by listening to it or using it in the store for a few hours. To determine if a high-end stereo or musical instrument meets their needs, clients typically take the product out on loan for several weeks, so that they can test the equipment or instrument's response to different types of music and listening environments. Warranties, money-back guarantees, and exchange programs all help to allay the fears of the customer that there will be costly problems with the product; with these programs, the customer knows that in the event of a breakdown, it will be fixed by the store or the product will be replaced.
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