WICHITA — Another day, another list.
Wichita has seemed to make a lot of them in the past couple of years.
The “Today” show just named Wichita the most affordable city in the nation.
Now, a list by Bundle, a new social money comparison site, is showing exactly how much Wichitans are spending.
Bundle ranks Wichita No. 22 in the top 25 cities for annual consumer spending.
Austin is No. 1 on the list with an average spending of $67,076 per household, excluding mortgages and rent.
Wichitans spend an average of $44,810.
The national average is $37,782.
“My first reaction to that is simply its probably decent to be in the middle of that,” says Dean Headley, associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University.
“As far as business is concerned, they probably want people to spend more.”
Headley says mostly he’s happy that someone is bothering to measure spending.
“We now have some numbers to work with rather than (simply) ‘Wichita’s a great place to live,’ ” he says. “Now, we have a benchmark.”
The question is, would Wichitans want the number to increase? Headley says it probably depends on who you are.
“The chamber’s going to look at it differently than, say, other groups around the city.”
Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Bryan Derreberry says the chamber often uses lists like these, though typically it’s when Wichita makes the Top 10 of something.
“It is good promotion for the city on a national level,” he says.
“Those rankings are what I call the icing on the cake — they’re not the primary ingredients.”
When a company or a person is trying to narrow a choice among several cities, though, Derreberry says, “Sometimes that icing on the cake can make a difference.”