Why We Overshop- A Psychological Experiment

V1: I bought this one! When I was out shopping today, I saw this item, just 1 piece left and with 20% off.

V2: Cool. But tell me what made you purchase it? Is it the 20% or the 1 leftover piece?

V1: Hmmm….Well, I don’t know. But I know I didn’t really need this but I was tempted to buy.

V2: Psychology of scarcity!

V1: What? (Still unsure of why I purchased)

I kept wondering what actually made me purchase the item today. That item was not in my ‘to buy’ list. 20% off tempted me to have a look at it and seeing only 1 piece remaining I made up my mind to purchase it. 1 pieces leftover piece did make a difference in the purchase today.

What make us buy all the unnecessary things? There must be some psychological associations that we make when we go out for shopping.

A psychological experiment made on IKEA (One of the world’s largest furniture retailers) shows what makes us buy more than we need

Tips from the above Psychological experiment to control unnecessary shopping:
-Make a shopping list
-Don’t shop if you are depressed or anxious
-Only use cash

A few other tips that can be helpful:
Recording purchase, carrying limited cash, not carrying cards, carrying a ‘to buy’ list, finding alternative activity for boredom,

Here are a few mistakes I have been doing when it comes to shopping.
-Not asking myself if I need it at the moment
-Buying products for the sales and discounts
-Associating shopping to a mind freshening activity
-Buying some or other product from a shop because I spent a lot of time in there.
– Sentences like ‘Only 2 remaining’, ‘limited offer’
-Keeping the mind calculator off

We do understand there are many of you who have been battling with the overshopping practices and there are many of you who have defeated the practice to use money wisely. Share your thoughts on how well we can avoid purchase of unnecessary items. We would love to hear from you.