There’s a big difference between comparison shopping for prices and the type of shopping you described with your bike example. The former is something that ever

There’s a big difference between comparison shopping for prices and the type of shopping you described with your bike example. The former is something that everyone who’s remotely frugal does, and the latter is something that people who want to get The Best Thing (ie not out of necessity) do. That research to find The Best Thing takes a whole lot of time and energy, and lots of people just don’t have that. Your bike example doesn’t really make much sense, because for the vast majority of people, the cheapest bike will do. Most people don’t bother measuring themselves first, and there’s basically no need to do so at all. [edit] To clarify: I don’t think that doing the type of research you described on a thing you’re buying means you value money less, but that it means you probably aren’t shopping for that thing out of necessity.