Retail Therapy

You’ve heard it called “retail therapy”—it really is often treated as a pick-me-up. People shop to fill the gap between who they are and who they want to be. In other words, it’s a way to fill a void in your life. You believe life will be better and you will be different if you own those shoes or that pair of pants. You need to understand – it won’t.

How to Resist: Understand the forces at work and your particular motivation for buying. Is your trip to your favourite store or website a result of a spat with your spouse or a particularly large number when you stepped on the scale? Did you just get a raise and feel you absolutely deserve to spend some of it immediately?

Or, were you feeling lonely and are just so grateful to the solicitous salesperson who seemed to be the first person in a very long time to care what might make you happy? (Remember, that may be true, but it’s also part of a salesperson’s job.)

Psychologist April Benson gives all of her patients a laminated card with six questions on it to put in their wallet on top of their credit cards. She suggests pausing—a deep breath helps, too—every time you approach the register and asking yourself:

1. Why am I here?
2. How do I feel?
3. Do I need this?
4. What if I wait?
5. How will I pay for it?
6. Where will I put it?

You may just find you no longer want to buy.

Some of the most common reasons people shop:

1. Habit

Sometimes we shop because we have trained ourselves—like Pavlov’s dog—to shop. Our favourite store just happens to be on the way home from work. So once a week we go in just to see what’s new. We’re never sure what we want to have for dinner, so we shop every day rather than once a week—and inevitably come out with items we didn’t plan on buying.

The Internet is tailor-made for habitual shoppers. You can check the sales online just as easily and quickly as you can check your e-mail or your bank account. By the way, marketers really understand this. Once they have you flagged as a habitual shopper, they do whatever they can to increase the frequency that you shop and the amount of merchandise you buy.

Websites for instance, send out bulk e-mails noting that a new line has arrived in store. Other retailers take a frequent flyer-type approach, where frequent customers are invited to shows, preview sales, special screenings of new items, and even given discounts to bring them back.

How to Resist: Generally, there’s a chain of events that leads you to buy, such as always stopping in at the bakery on your walk between your office and your car. You’ve taken a number of steps in order. You left the office. You turned right. You passed by the window of the bakery, stopping to notice how the displays have changed since you walked by yesterday. You smell the latest batch of cookies and slices being baked.

You glance at your watch and see you really don’t have to be home for another 25 minutes and you stop in, where you inevitably have a cup of coffee and some of that freshly baked bun. What could you have done instead? You could have turned left. You could have stayed in the office for another 15 minutes so that you really wouldn’t have had time to shop. You could have parked in a different carpark so that you would have to take a completely different path.

The key to resisting is recognising your behaviour patterns in detail so that you can change them.

2. Impulse

Modern stores are designed to implore you to look, touch, focus, to take your eye from the thing you need to other things you may very well want. Shopping is a conflict between desire and willpower. When our desire for things overwhelms our willpower, then we make an impulse purchase. It all tends to happen in the blink of an eye.

How to Resist: You are most likely to buy on impulse when their self-regulatory impulses are depleted. You may be tired from a long day at work. You may even just be tired from the previous hour of shopping. Or you may be worried about your kids or work.

All of those kinds of stresses make you more prone to buy impulsively. Monitor yourself. Don’t surf to your favourite website after you’ve had a glass of wine, a fight with your spouse or a particularly hard day. And don’t visit stores when you know you’re not at your best.

3. Compulsive Behaviour

The difference between impulse shopping and compulsive shopping is frequency. Impulse shopping happens when you find yourself, occasionally, faced with a purchase that’s too tough to resist. Compulsive shopping is when you shop more often then you’d like, feeling unable to stop.

There are four basic types of compulsive shoppers.

1. The first group shop as a way of getting back at another person, typically a spouse, with whom they’re unable to communicate in any other way.
2. The second group shop because the act of finding the right thing at the right price makes them feel important and gives their life meaning.
3. The third group are people for whom compulsive shopping is just one in a series of compulsive behaviours like eating, drinking or drug abuse.
4. The fourth group shops to boost their mood—although in a much larger way than the people in our first group. When a compulsive shopper prepares to buy, her mood rises steadily—her heart quickens, her palms sweat. When she makes her purchase, her mood plateaus, then it quickly falls off. Her good feelings quickly evaporate and remorse or guilt sets in.

How to Resist: There is no quick fix for compulsive behaviour. People who spend compulsively need to develop an emotional system that will help them tolerate distress in other areas of their lives. You may also need to seek professional help.

4. Entertainment

There has to be something besides shopping that either gets people there or keeps people there longer. The result: for many people, shopping is all about a social experience. You meet your friend at the shopping centre because you want to be with her. You buy something together because that’s something else you can share.

How to Resist: Delay, delay, delay. When you’re shopping for entertainment, you tend to buy because you feel guilty about not buying. How can you spend nothing when your friend is already carrying four shopping bags and looks to be ready for more? How can you spend nothing when the salesperson has given you 30 minutes of her time?

To take the edge off, put the items you’re considering on hold. If you’re still desperate to have them tomorrow, you can always return to the store and buy them. Putting a little distance between yourself and the purchase will help you evaluate it more rationally. And besides, if the item is really for you, it will be there when you come back.

2 Responses to “Retail Therapy”

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1. Karen Simpson says:

   October 16, 2008 at 7:54 am

   Hi

   I would like to thank you for these types of resources. I work for Macarthur Disability Services in Macarthur (Campbelltown NSW)

   We are working with clients with a disability and have over 110 employees with 15 plus sites (transition to work, post school options, access, community participation and recreation programs) plus a behaviour intervention program and personal helpers and mentoring program for people with a mental illness and much much more. Please feel free to visit our web site. I cannot express my thanks enough for the valuable information AIPC provides.

   I am particularly after information about counselling and assisting people with a disability. If there was a course available specialising in disability I would be extremely interested.

   all the best
   Karen

   Reply
2. josie grikepelis says:

   September 23, 2009 at 11:10 am

   Thank you. I am a student beginner at the AIPC”and I am loving it.

   This is particularly true based on my own experience. One of the things that I have developed as a resistance to this “therapy is – instead of driving to the shops I make a detour to my local gym.

   I still go to the shops but more on “necessities”and less want.

   Have a great day.

   Kind regards

   Josie

   Reply