Overconsumption is one of the main drivers of climate change. It's impossible to reduce our impact on the environment without consuming less. We understand that consuming less is important, so why is it so difficult to stop? The problem is our society is designed in a way to encourage us to buy more. Brands are tapping into our human psychology to get us to spend more money with them. Here are three ways brands encourage us to shop unnecessarily:
1) We want to get a good deal
We live in a capitalist society which places high importance on money and creates a scarcity culture. So, when we see items that are cheap or reduced, we feel we have to buy now in case the price goes up again or it sells out. We want to get a good deal - more for our money. This leads us to buy more than we want or need.
2) We want new things all of the time
The creation and acceleration of the trend cycle has also accelerated our purchases. We once might have only bought new when we needed to replace a broken item, but now we buy to stay on-trend and in style, regardless of whether we need an item or not. This has conditioned our brains to want new things all the time. And rather than try to slow down our purchases, we continue to try and keep up with the trend cycle.
3) We want to achieve a certain status
Companies have long made us believe that the purchase of certain items can help us achieve a desired status. But the allure is just an illusion, and we don't realize that the status we want is unachievable until after we've made the purchase. And oftentimes, we'll continue to keep purchasing in pursuit of making that status a reality.
It can be difficult to keep focused on buying less with all of this messaging trying to make us do the opposite. But by understanding how our purchasing habits are being influenced by marketing and psychology, we can get better at spotting it - helping us make better, conscious decisions!
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