For an anti-impulsive online consumerism

Long before the arrival of the Internet, marketing and advertising already aimed to push us to acquire products beyond our authentic needs or desires. However, the digital environment, which absorbs an increasing part of our lives, is capable of playing with our emotions and our subconscious in a much deeper way than before - in turn exerting a significant influence on our offline life.

Taking advantage of the beginning of summer, in this blog entry we analyse why hyperconnection weakens our discernment and our willingness to buy, and how to regain control over our way of consuming.

More impulsive online shopping

According to the e-commerce solution provider Shopify, the impulsive purchase is "the sudden and immediate purchase of a product without any prior intention." Just before the pandemic, an average American spent $155 per month in this way, a figure that increased by 18% in just 3 months with the confinement in which our lives were more connected than ever. For much of the industry, the goal is to encourage the customer to this type of impulsive transactions: "What can you do in your online store to cause them?" asks Shopify, "Stay with us until the end to find out."

The jargon that is imposed in the digital industry highlights the frequent divergence of interests between itself and users. For example, the venture capital fund Sequoia considers a "sane" product from the perspective of business when it is "sticky" (that is, when it generates a recurrence of use close to addiction).

This phenomenon should increase as online activity is increasingly oriented towards consumption, as happens on social networks. According to Accenture, "social commerce" (sales driven from the community itself and the day-to-day of our activity on networks) should go from 492 billion dollars in 2021 to 1.2 trillion in 2025 (+344% in just 4 years). Unlike traditional advertising, which our brain identifies as such, our mind lowers its guard and becomes more susceptible to the influence of this type of commercial persuasion.

A recent study has highlighted the growing influence of networks, especially Instagram and Tiktok on how money is spent. 59% of the 2000 respondents recognised that they bought more compulsively through the networks than in a physical store while up to 45% get into debt in the process.

Absence of barriers

Many studies have shown that the act of buying is driven more by our emotions than by reason. Through the immense amount of data collected about us in our connected life, digital platforms are able to know very precisely our weaknesses and emotions at a given time. Neuromarketing takes advantage of this information to access our most impulsive brain, weakening our critical spirit and our will, with the aim of inducing purchases in a highly individualised way.

Many choices, including purchase decisions, can be predicted up to 11 seconds before they are consciously manifested, according to a study by Scientific Reports. Digital platforms usually have a temporary advantage, by detecting our potential desires that we do.

In addition, the online environment breaks down the small obstacles that allow us to reintroduce awareness when buying: e-commerce is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and any sudden craving, whether our own or instilled, can become a purchase in seconds. The most famous example is Amazon's one-click buy, in which the customer has to think about it as little as possible to make a purchase.

All the processes that would normally involve a long path full of obstacles between the formulation of a desire (more or less conscious) and its satisfaction can be shortened to a few seconds. This is illustrated by Google Lens, which allows you to instantly recognise what someone is wearing from an image and where to find it. From "I like how this person is dressed" to "I buy it" it can be almost immediate.

For an anti-impulsive consumption

Faced with the ideal "conversion" cycle promoted by digital marketing specialists whose objective is to maximise impulsive consumption, we propose here an opposite ideal: anti-impulsive consumption.

This purpose involves moving away from the logic of immediacy and reintroducing pause, awareness and discernment in our purchasing decisions. It is not necessarily about adopting an ascetic lifestyle or extreme sobriety, but about pursuing our most authentic desires and preventing third parties from pushing us towards an act of buying in an excessively artificial way.

When we have the desire to buy something, I suggest that we leave it in a corner of our mind or write it in a note and give it time (days, weeks or even more) to help us discern between genuine desires and those that are ephemeral and shallow.

I propose that you think about it from two perspectives:

1. I want it today, will I want it tomorrow?

During this decanting process, the most genuine desires will likely be maintained, while the others will vanish.

2. Does it respond to a logic of unnecessary accumulation and substitution?

Do I already have something that fulfils the same function?

Do I really need one more or a new one?

What does the latest model bring me? (Obsolescence by design)

Why not start by limiting yourself, at least this summer, to shopping in physical stores and make a stop to your online purchases? This may not be enough to adopt this slow shopping philosophy but it will undoubtedly be a first step.

By Diego Hidalgo