Commentary: Retail therapy won’t repair your damaged sense of self-worth
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Commentary: Retail therapy won't repair your damaged sense of cocky-worth
We hope our findings can help consumers understand and rein in emotional impulses that drive their shopping, say 2 consumer psychology experts.
Pedestrians using the scramble crossing in Orchard Road on Dec 16, 2017. (Photo: Chan Luo Er)
27 Dec 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 03 Jul 2022 05:21PM)
PARIS: Every bit shopping trends peak over Christmas, this might exist a timely moment to gauge the effects of a kind of retail therapy that researchers call compensatory consumption – but one that has a non-conscious process backside information technology.
Indeed, why precisely do consumers buy products that they don't actually demand?
And if shopping is supposed to be therapeutic, to what degree is such consumption helping them to deal with their insecurities?
Virtually importantly, once they buy the product, does that purchase actually brand them feel ameliorate?
These are the questions which accept driven our enquiry since 2015, absorbed as we are by the subconscious impulses driving people'southward consumption choices.
What we have discovered is that certain marketing tactics, associated with forms of consumption, including the ones we see around Christmas time, might adversely impact consumer well-beingness. Past bringing these findings to the fore nosotros hope they can help consumers understand and rein in emotional impulses that drive their shopping.
READ: The festive season brings loneliness, sorrow and feet for some, a commentary
CHRISTMAS DRIVE
Surveys reveal that the end-of-year holidays encourage a caste of collective over-consumption and binge shopping rarely seen at any other fourth dimension of the twelvemonth.
Shoppers in the United States, for example, will spend an boilerplate of over United states$900 (S$1,235) on their gifts this twelvemonth (where an average monthly net bacon is United states$4,158). For American retailers, meanwhile, Christmas represents the year'south largest economic stimulus: In 2018, information technology is projected to abound to over US$700 billion, a four.55 per cent growth compared to 2017.
Singaporeans set aside a comparable proportion of an boilerplate of South$769 for their Christmas shopping (out of an average monthly cyberspace bacon of South$3,973).
These trends are reflected elsewhere in Asia as people spend excessively not merely at Christmas but pretty much from Nov to February.
These shopping sprees take in the Nov 11 Singles' Twenty-four hours and Lunar New Year in Cathay; the end-of-year holidays travels in the region; and the yr-stop bonuses in Nihon, Due south Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
While there are no bachelor statistics for retail therapy in Singapore, official studies reflect the latest consumption patterns through the Consumer Price Index.
Unquestionably, they reveal Singaporeans' upwardly tendency towards make consumerism. Indeed, the 2022 written report shows them spending an average of 22.ii per cent of their global budget on recreation, culture, goods and services, communication and clothing, compared to 22.3 per cent on food.
The side by side five-yearly survey scheduled for 2022 is likely to encounter this trend fasten up even more sharply.
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NON-Witting Drive TO Swallow
Amongst these consumers are people unconsciously seeking to boost a damaged self-worth (their power, intelligence, or even sociability). This compensatory consumption is a well-documented impulse, an action arguably becoming more widespread every bit consumption becomes available 24/seven, thanks to the services on Cyberspace.
Then, when Sophie (not her real name), discovers her project's funding had been slashed by her dominate, she suddenly becomes enamoured by the Bottega Veneta leather handbag advertisement in her favourite fashion mag. Meanwhile, after failing his engineering course, Phillip's kickoff instinct is to buy a marble chess set he never previously dreamt of splurging on.
Both have been fatigued into compensatory consumption, which aims to set damaged aspects of self-identity.
Sophie seeks a product symbolic of condition and ability, to regain her sense of power. Meanwhile, Phillip'due south interest in a chess set that is symbolic of intelligence is driven by his need to affirm his intellectual chapters.
Crucially, both are unlikely to be aware of the drivers behind their interest in these products.
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EXPLICIT VERSUS IMPLICIT MARKETING
Simply does consumption really manage to repair their self-worth? For three years we have explored the effects of compensatory consumption on cocky-worth in the US, France and India.
Concomitantly, we analysed what upshot marketing tactics have on this retail therapy. Across seven experiments involving over a 1000 volunteers, our research reveals that whether compensatory consumption works to fix people's damaged sense of self-worth depends on the extent to which the connexion between the products and aspects of the threatened self-identity is fabricated explicit.
Our conclusions, recently published in Journal of Consumer Research, give us pause for thought.
Yes, consumers compensate for their "self-arrears" by purchasing goods they may not consciously demand. Withal, if brands incite connections to their "cocky-deficit" in an explicit manner, through their products' names or marketing slogans, this "compensatory" outcome is impeded, even at a hidden level.
When Sophie is tempted by the Bottega Veneta leather bag, its tagline, "When your own initials are enough", spells out the product's connection with power, which is the damaged aspect of her self-identity but might undermine her process of self-repair.
Phillip's unconscious desire to repair his insecurities about his intelligence through purchasing the chess set could be undermined if the makers utilize and remind him of slogans like that coined past the 17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal: "Chess is the gymnasium of the mind".
In both cases, these explicit messages will remind Sophie and Phillip about their respective failures of power and intelligence, and rumination will impede repair of self-worth.
All the same, our research as well reveals that when connections between the product and "self-arrears" are not explicit, it increases the chances for self-repair. Sophie might well restore her self-worth, for example, by splurging on the Bottega Veneta leather bag if there are no taglines explicitly associating it to aspects of ability, as luxury products inherently and implicitly symbolise and heave feelings of power and condition.
READ: Who on globe however buys apocryphal branded goods? A commentary
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING WITH A STING
This issue is not express to luxury goods alone; it can apply to whatever goods that symbolise an aspect that a shopper feels strongly about. So, a mere subscription to an intellectual magazine with an explicit tagline could too re-activate negative feelings about one's own intelligence.
Our inquiry outlines the conditions in which this form of consumption can restore the damaged self. It also questions the marketer's belief that taglines about the attributes of a make or production is beneficial for consumers seeking to associate themselves with those attributes.
In conclusion, compensating through consumption of products with explicit marketing could accept the insidious effect of actually prolonging rather than repairing the damaged cocky-concept.
Then, in this high-octane festive period, should you experience, similar Sophie and Phillip, an unexplainable urge to purchase a fancy leather purse, high-brow chess prepare, Rolex watch, upmarket pen, speedy car, or any other symbol of self-worth, you should pause and think again.
Just what is driving this impulse? Should the desire be linked to a life feel that has shaken your confidence, perhaps your buy will not repair the damage you are trying to overcome – quite the contrary.
Dr Nimish Rustagi holds a PhD in marketing from HEC Paris whose works brings together a combination of academic inquiry and managerial experience. Professor L J Shrum is in HEC's Marketing Department and is a consumer psychologist. This commentary is based on a paper published in the Journal of Consumer Inquiry.
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/festive-shopping-retail-therapy-repair-damaged-self-esteem-worth-221216
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