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Immediately after the New Year, a period of mass sales begins in stores. For many of us, this becomes a symbolic continuation of our favorite holiday. Why are we willing to afford (much) more than usual these days? Is it just the discounts?
“When I get to the store at the time of discounts, I feel that I simply have to treat myself. Even if I buy a thing that is inappropriate in size or lifestyle, I promise myself to lose weight on purpose or figure out what to combine it with. It turns out to be more insulting to leave empty-handed than to acquire even something aimless, ”Marina admits. If at normal times we save and reproach ourselves for extra spending, then during the sales season we are symbolically allowed everything. A trip to the store becomes a metaphysical journey back to childhood, when we were taken to the park and allowed to ride the merry-go-round longer than usual. In part, this is a period of triumph in us of what Eric Berne called “I-Child”, that is, the actualization of the emotional sphere associated with childhood impressions and experiences *. Marketing, on the other hand, has successfully learned to appeal to our “I-Child”. “The largest budgets are allocated for New Year’s windows, which are supposed to convey the atmosphere of childhood and magic,” says Olga Burakova, visual merchandiser for a major clothing brand. – A small fairy tale in a shop window with an inscription promising discounts is something that is hard to pass by. Inexpensive holiday trivia are specially displayed in baskets on the way to the checkout. While waiting in line, the buyer will probably be interested in something and increase the purchase amount. Also, a good technique is “live mannequins”, when the employees themselves – sellers, cashiers, managers – put on interesting sets of clothes that you can buy in the store. This awakens a childish desire in the buyer – “I want a dress like that girl.”
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“Any holiday is an occasion for regression, a weakening of the adult functions of control and responsibility,” says Lev Khegai, a Jungian analyst. “However, marketers are only taking advantage of a situation that has developed long before the emergence of their profession. Since ancient times, people at this time together experienced the end of the solar cycle and the hope for the revival of life in the new year. Today, the myth from the collective unconscious about death and rebirth manifests itself in the need for meaningful rituals. In particular, in replacing old things with new ones.
On sales often there are no sizes we need, and then at this universal, as it seems, holiday, we feel like outsiders. To get rid of this feeling, we begin to buy unnecessary things. At the same time, conspicuous spending not only awakens the childish beginning, but also indicates a chosenness, albeit an illusory one. “In the sociological theory of the ‘leisure class’**, the greedy, mindless consumption that manifests itself at sales turns out to be an unconscious desire to break into the ruling elite, which is excluded from the boring and fatal cycle of production-consumption,” says Lev Khegay. “Only “gods” or “the powers that be”, exceptional individuals, can squander money with impunity.
The return of the carnival
During the period of discounts, it is no coincidence that we first of all go to clothing stores. “Choosing clothes, trying them on, meeting our new image reflected in the mirror allows us to get sensual pleasures and joyful emotional experiences,” says Olga Yutkis, a gestalt therapist. “In a clothing store, we meet both our physical nature and our emotional nature.” In addition, since ancient times, the New Year was celebrated with carnivals, in which dressing up was an obligatory part of the fun. “The need for renewal makes people at least renew their appearance, change their appearance,” says Lev Khegay. “To change clothes, to take off an outdated shell, also means to shed the burden of old problems and open up to new experiences.”
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Separation of interests
It is women at sales, and especially in clothing stores, who spend significantly more than men. Men are no less characterized by regression, but they realize the ego-state of “I-Child” rather in other areas: sports, including extreme, more aggressive driving, gambling. “Women from a male point of view are allowed to be more irrational and infantile,” says Lev Khegay. “Partly men waste their women with their hands. And this is an opportunity to subsequently scold not yourself, but them for excessive wastefulness.
Long live the holiday … consumerists?
“There is nothing reprehensible in the fact that sales are perceived by us as part of a pleasant New Year’s ritual,” says Olga Yutkis. – Bright shop windows and decorated Christmas trees in shopping centers create a mood. The main thing is not to forget that the point of our trip to the store is to acquire the things we really need at a reasonable price.” Lev Khegay recalls that the psychological meaning of the holiday is in the extraordinary, which invades the ordinary. The brighter the festive changes, the greater the healing effect they have on later life. “An element of social ritual is also important in the holiday: to do something like everyone else and together with everyone,” he emphasizes. – Unfortunately, sales are one of the few relatively non-destructive and socially acceptable ways to create a holiday for a modern person. However, the feeling of a holiday is determined not by the actual spending of money, but by the sensations and emotions that accompany them. And it is especially important for us to be able to find vivid impressions in life that would later warm us, which we would be pleased to remember.
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* Eric Bern. “Transactional Analysis”.
** Thorstein Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions.