Shopping therapy

I remember the time when someone could get what they needed from under the counter, and the rest were waiting to be “thrown away”, that is, when the remnants of what was not sold from the back door appeared on the counter, and did not buy, but “got” clothes, food, books , furniture and more. The word “shopping” was simply nowhere to come from. Today’s man is said to have three hobbies: shopping, eating, and dieting. You don’t need to get anything – have time to choose from all the voices calling: “Buy me!” goods and do not fly with the price. For a change, you can shop not in the store, but on the Internet. Large branded stores and malls become places of “cultural entertainment” in vibrant networks of hunters for buyers. During the sales season, all European languages ​​​​are heard in the stores of New York and New Jersey – people who have flocked from different countries sweep things from the shelves in twos, fours, sixes, eights. Consumerism (from consumer – consumer), materialism, shopping, shopping, shopping …

This relatively new phenomenon attracts the attention of economists, financiers, sociologists, culturologists and, of course, psychologists. What needs does shopping satisfy? What drives him? What do we expect from him and what do we get? All these questions become the subject of serious research not only for the development of sales, but also for understanding the person and his prospects.

In a recent book, psychologist Kit Yarrow draws attention to the connection between shopping and human relationships. Buying is something like a message to others. About what? About how I’m like everyone else? That I have good taste? What do I know about fashion? That I’m rich enough? What do I deserve? What won the competition “Who will buy better”? Even if I buy the simplest and most necessary thing in the household, the choice of a brand is somehow connected with my social circle and can be a message. “We bought this Turk in Turkey, and not in Istanbul, where tourists are fooled, but in the village from a master who makes them himself” – a message about himself.

For a good photo and heels of pixels – for the eyes and for the ears, I have a camera with 8 pixels, I change it to a camera with 12. My car squeezes 200 km / h, I buy a new one with 250 km. Why do I need these seven pixels and 50 km/h? Zero benefit from them. A lot of people buy things at a much faster rate than they manage to get rid of them, and at a loss – now you can’t sell a used thing for more than you bought it, but, most likely, you will give it to second-hand cheaply or just to charity. But we pay not for the benefit, but for the pleasure and the illusion of greater freedom – today’s life, especially in a big city, is very organized, there are too many rules that bind behavior. In my youth, when money was tight, I noticed that the less money there is in my pocket, the more I want to buy: no matter what – even a pencil, just to buy, freeing myself from the handcuffs of poverty. But the owner of the IKEA empire lives in an ordinary house, drives an old car, flies in economy class and is not hung with a hundred thousand bucks Swiss watch – his self-esteem does not need such replenishment.

They say that happiness is not in money, but it can buy if not happiness itself, then many joys. Probably so. However, shopping has other motives and goals that are usually hidden from consciousness.

You often want to change your hairstyle, change clothes or rearrange the furniture in the house when the mood is not very good – a way out of the monotony and stereotype of life, changing the picture allows you to level it. In today’s life, there is a lot of anxiety, unspent anger, loneliness and other experiences that, to put it mildly, are not fun. And shopping turns out to be something like validol – it does not cure, but it helps for a while, it plays the role of a kind of psychotherapy.

Stigmatizing shopping and attaching psychiatric or moral tags to it is just as empty and stupid as blaming the consumer society, advertising, etc. for it. The question is not what kind of bait is on the hook, but whether I peck at it. But sometimes I peck on a bare hook. And then it’s worth taking a break and thinking about why I’m doing this, what it gives me and what to do next, so that shopping serves me, and not me.

Read more:

• How do we really feel about fashion?

* Kit Yarrow «Gen BuY” (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2009)