Back when I took marketing, I learned that only a handful of things actually had an inelastic demand pattern (the classic example being heroin to an addict.) Everything else is subject to a complex combination of cost, availability, competition, preference, substitution, brand image, etc.
In other words, some days you want to buy an iced coffee from that vendor, some days you don’t.
As for Johnny and his parents, he’ll spoil his dinner.
Probably when they bought him a bag of chips and soda that first week they viewed it as a individual event and not the start of a tradition.
You take your kids out to a movie one weekend. That doesn’t mean you’re going to take them out to a movie every weekend.
You’ll take them out to other movies and buy them other snacks. But you’re not obligated to follow a schedule.
Consumer behavior is pretty widely studied. Dip your toe in the waters, read Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
Because when he was a child, his parents used to buy him chips and soda when they took him to this particular gas station. One day, they just … stopped. Little Johnny had no idea why, and the psychological damage it did to him never came up with his psychologist. He never thought of it as having a major effect–just that every once in a while, after forming some sort of otherwise innocuous pleasant habit, he’ll abruptly stop it. Of course, had he thought to mention it, it might have explained the endless stream of corpses he left behind and gotten him to stop killing earlier, but that’s a question for a different thread.
You’re funny… and kind of scary. 
Does it show that right before I posted I was reading the creepythread?
Maybe Johnny’s parents were just horrible people and stopped feeding him all together. We will be hearing about him any day now when some social worker finds him in the locked back bedroom.
For me it’s simple, lack of money. Even cheep things can add up when you are on a limited income. Otherwise I would have a rentboy here every week to do my house work while I sipped ice tea.
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?
Diamonds02:
A thought just occurred to me. Are you looking for explanations of the hypotheticals, justifications, or guidance on how *you *can develop some impulse control?
If you clarify your goals we can often offer better answers.
[bolding mine]
I think the bolded section may be a clue as to why Diamonds is so curious about this issue.
mmm
Spontaneous impulse behavior, by definition, tends to occur spontaneously in response to impulse.
Some people are creatures of habit, like you. You go to the same bar every Thursday. You order your beer. You have chosen to acquire a habit that almost requires you to make a purchase, and you choose the same thing each time because you aren’t very adventurous.
Me, I go to choir practice on Thursdays. That’s my acquired habit, and it doesn’t require a purchase.But I also don’t go every Thursday. And sometimes I stop at the Circle K on the way home and buy my PepsiMax to take to work the next day…and sometimes I don’t. I’m not wedded to the habit. And while my weekly grocery shopping list is virtually the same each week, I don’t ALWAYS buy the same stuff, or the same brands, or go to the same store.
As a marketer of consumables, you want consumers to establish habits, and some will. Others won’t.
For three years I ate at least twice a week at a certain Chipotle. I haven’t been there in six months. I switched jobs and haven’t been within ten miles of the place. Moreover, I haven’t been to a Chipotle more than twice - my old company didn’t have a good cafeteria, but had a ton of places nearby - now I have a good cafeteria, and a derth of places nearby. Only my son likes Chipotle, so I don’t go after work.
I have a kid who is big on “let’s stop at the gas station and get me chips and a pop.” And sometimes I say yes. Most of the time I say no. He’s a skinny active kid, but I know skinny active kids can develop habits in eating, get desk jobs, and struggle…so I don’t want to make chips and soda a regular part of his diet when its in my control. And I’ve watched people who put $3 a day into the vending machine who complain about not having enough money to pay the rent - $3 seems affordable, but if you are searching the couch cushions every month for the last $50 to get the bills paid, I know where that money went. On the other hand, its a good sometimes treat. As a parent, I’m trying to fight the habitual consumption of something simply because its a habit that tastes good and is affordable - it needs to do more.
My wife used to go by Starbucks every day and get a pastry and one of those coffees that somehow costs 4 bucks. One time she added up the cost for a year and stopped going to Starbucks. I was glad.
And sometimes the vendor creeps them out, with awkward, ill defined questions that lead no where.
Yeah, they liked and can afford the ice cream, but ice cream is available everywhere. Why go back to the weird guy with the awkward vibe?
I don’t think so. Why parents would stop buying junk food for their kid is a fundamentally different question than why someone would habitually buy something for themselves.
I think the OP’s question is very strange, and there’s something I find mildly disturbing about it, perhaps in part because it is so vague.
If you’re buying a 500-calorie coffee drink every day, you could lose about a pound a week (or slow your weight gain by a pound a week) by just cutting out that coffee drink, making no other changes to your lifestyle. If you kept that up for a year, you could lose 50 pounds, and save some money as well. You’d save over $1400 over the course of a year. These things do add up over time.
So you can have 4 of them. What’s the problem?
Even if a person is only doing this on workdays, it really adds up. And adding up the cost per year or even per month can be a real eye opener. I started taking my lunch to work on most days when I added up the cost of even getting cheap fast food every day. It’s also useful to figure out how long one has to work in order afford that cup of coffee or the bag of Cheesy Poofs…and how long that coffee or snack lasts.
Leap year, maybe?