Christmas is around the corner and the gift-giving ritual is well underway, leaving many of us with much lighter pockets.
But now, scientists have revealed the methods of manipulation that brands and retailers use to get us to keep spending our hard earned cash.
In an article for The Conversation, Dr Paul Harrison, senior lecturer at Deakin University Business School in Victoria, Australia explains how they keep us buying.
Many people see marketing as a form of manipulation, particularly around Christmas and the other retail bonanzas: Easter, Valentine’s Day, Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day.
But rather than simply trying to trick people, the masters of marketing know it’s much easier to understand and work with innate human flaws.
By drawing on a plethora of psychological and sociological research, marketers subtly give us permission to buy and not to think too much, or too deeply, about why we’re buying.
Not thinking all the time is a very efficient way for us to get by.
It conserves energy, and allows us to live relatively easily by responding to our psychological predispositions, social norms, and general cognitive imperfections.
Here are some of our flaws marketers use to nudge us towards consumption.
The scarcity effect
Scarcity theory tells us that if we think something is scarce or only available for a short time, our mind will give it more weight.
Christmas is a hard deadline, so we are limited in our freedom to delay the purchase decision.
Scarcity influences our ability to think clearly when making decisions, and accelerates our perceived perishability of an offer.
We feel that if we don’t participate in the Christmas ritual, we will miss out on a significant social experience.
In 2017? Not quite.
Melbourne City, for example, has its annual ‘Shop the City’ promotion in the first week of December, where major retailers offer discounts available only on the day.
Similarly, many shops are offering Christmas-only bundles or gift sets, often at a ‘discount’ (which ‘doubles’ the scarcity effect).
All of these tap into our willingness to respond to the scarcity effect and feel the need to buy things we would normally ignore.
Remember Christmas won’t be your only opportunity to show others how much you love them, or to spend time with your family.
It seems obvious, but you can buy people gifts at any time of the year.
All marketers are doing is tapping into your predisposition to value experiential scarcity during socially validated moments to encourage you to behave in particular ways.
