Having a bad day? How about some retail therapy? Stop at the mall and make an exaggerated and unconventional purchase, to make yourselves feel momentarily better about your life.
Sounds Great, Right?
Can you imagine this happening 100 years ago? I’m sure in some cases maybe it did, but not as freely and senseless as we “choose” to shop in today’s society.
While reading chapter 3, the concept that stood out to me was the entire shopping experience and the long term value and importance of the actual purchase. It was about the entire process of shopping, not just the item. Back then shopping served a number of purposes. The first being necessity, then a social and entertaining quality of the experience.
Blaszczyk discusses how new products and goods became readily available to the American consumer through catalogs and department stores. The term “palaces of consumption” is used to describe the first department stores which catered to the “comfortable classes”. This new kind of store, ornately designed and “palace like”, created an entire shopping experience, a shopper’s paradise and a place to enjoy. Women would go from store to store, spending the entire day browsing and socializing. This helped to make the satisfaction of purchasing, long lasting.
This differs so much from today’s impulsive needs to have the latest and greatest, only to buy a newer model next year. It’s also the ease of shopping, with the internet and apps on your phone, a couple of clicks, and it’s yours! This has a truly created a shopping monster with credit card debt and a closet full of things you may never use.
Today it’s the immediate, but generally short lived gratification, or possibly that emotional purchase you’ll regret next week. As consumers in this society, for the most part, our purchases aren’t as” thought out”, or carry nearly the value they did 50 or 100 years ago.
We are much more of a disposable society, seldom satisfied and constantly seeking more. This type of extreme consumption has helped up to produce things like shopping anonymous, shopping therapy, books, like “Confession of a shopaholic”, and “Oniomania”, the actual shopping compulsive disorder. A new disorder that is talked about in the video link from msnbc.com is called the “returnaholic”, a person that is addicted to returning things. A landmark 2006 Stanford University study reveals between 17 million and 18 million Americans suffer from compulsive shopping/spending disorder. If our ancestors could see us now…
Is there any aspect of the shopping experience from 100 years ago that would appeal to you?
Is your typical shopping experience satisfying? And if so, for how long?
What percentages of your purchases are impulsive followed by regret?
What was your worst retail therapy purchase?
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