natstar said:
Why would you want to sell to poorer people? They are obviously poor, so they cant buy anything
They'll hopefully teach you this later at uni for marketing, you sell to poor people on finance because they are more likely to buy on finance because they are poor and can not afford to buy outright. So you get them on finance with high interest to make you the most profit and the Sherrif will then come and help you get that high interest when they start defaulting.
See the logic people have is "oh I can do it little by little, I can't afford $XXX but I can afford $X for an XXX time period". But they forget that they over extend themselves time and time again especially with credit cards where this mindset is easily taken advantage of, kind of like young people with mobiles and the ringtones and $XXXX phone bills. Look at infomercials as an example as well, they no longer tell you the whole price, they only tell you how little in instalments it will cost you. Infomercials are a great way to examine consumer behaviour and the steps in the consumer decision making process.
Think of the number of people who go and buy a Chrisco hamper, I would hazard a guess that most of them would not be the "well off" and essentially they are paying off a loan to have a few meals during the festive season allowing Chrisco to buy their stuff in bulk and use your money throughout the year to earn interest on. So Chrisco should not work in theory, they are more expensive than buying at supermarket (especially when sales are on) and they use YOUR money for the entire year, yet I still see the local freight depot full of hampers at Christmas time because of their marketing and the human beings it is aimed at.
http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=104117&catId=100286&tid=100008&p=1
Remember you might not fall for a lot of these schysters but there are 20 or so million people in Australia, and you only need to find a handful every week to make yourself rich (just look at all the successful con jobs around the place). Amway, Chrisco, leasing without a positive net result, negative gearing on a low income, emu farms, investing in Australian movies, I could go on but this post is off topic enough as it is.
For those who doubt you can sell expensive stuff to poor people have obviously not done a lot of research. Keeping up with the Joneses and satisfying your WANTS rather than just your NEEDS is the name of the game in our consumerist society
Having said that, I wouldn't do it since I don't like any form of direct selling as I would feel to guilty about ripping people off