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How to Be a Cunning Consumer
- Published: August 28, 2010 by Umma Queenan Comments (0)
There are no two ways about it: businesses want your money. Being a cunning consumer is about spotting the tricks, they use to persuade you to buy and spend more than you meant to, and knowing how to avoid them.
There’s also no doubt that we want to spend, so it’s just as important to understand the psychology of shopping and your own shopping personality. Finally, you need to get into the mindset of thinking about why you want what you want and how much are you willing to pay for it. Then you can learn where to look to find the best deals, discounts and promotions.
Why we shop?
Shopping is all about buying ‘stuff. Some stuff you need, like food, but what about the rest of the stuff? All those things we don’t actually need, and often can’t really afford? Like that new pair of shoes, you’ll probably rarely wear but felt you deserved after putting up with your grumpy boss all day.
There are, of course, any number of reasons why we shop: from being bored or fed up, to feel happy or impulsive. Sometimes we can even shop as an alternative sport – long before internet shopping took, off mail-order companies always claimed to see a huge surge in orders (particularly from women) during the finals of major sporting events.
Then we’ll go home and make excuses for our spending or even lie about the price of our purchases to our partners, parents or families to avoid one of those ‘How much?’ conversations. But what is it about shopping and buying things that keep us going back for more?
The shopping ‘buzz’
Psychologists claim one reason we shop is because we get addicted to the ‘buzz’ or high we get when buying something new. Just like a magpie seeing something sparkly, shiny and exciting, we spot that potential new purchase and want it.
Suzy Greaves, founder of the Big Leap Coaching Company, says it’s down to brain chemistry. When we get that ‘I want it’ feeling and act on it, she says it releases a chemical in the brain called dopamine, one of your ‘happy’ hormones. This gives us an instant feel-good buzz, but it’s only ever temporary; in some cases, the feeling is over before you’ve even left the shop, or at best it can last a few hours until you’re home.
Once the effect is gone, and the eagerly purchased item has been relegated to the back of the nearest cupboard, we feel the need to go back for another ‘hit’. And of course there’s the ‘down’ side too. If you’ve spent more than you should have done, borrowed from the joint account or know you now can’t clear your credit-card bill, this can bring you down even more quickly.
This craving of wanting to buy is, Suzy says, driven by the ‘cave¬man’ part of our brain. So whether it’s a new pair of shoes, a car or a conservatory, that feeling of wanting something, fixating on it and hunting it down before buying, is due to an ancient part of our biological make-up.
Yet shopping online and the hit is, naturally, not so great. Shopping online means a more measured, logical approach. We’re less likely to give in to our emotions; hence doing the weekly supermarket shop online usually means a cheaper bill, as we’re less likely to be influenced by our emotions the way we would be in the store.
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