Black Friday is back and, with it, the crowds of consumers willing to fight to get the best discounts and offers. In 2020, Amazon billed $ 10,000 per second and it was precisely on that day that it reached the sales record .
This year, the offerings even include new products and services from human reproduction centers. How to explain these levels of consumption? Do we have a shopping addiction? In this article we will question this idea and review the importance of the social context in our consumption habits: how much, what and when we consume.
Shopping addiction?
The problem of overselling is not new, and attempts to explain it as a result of a disorder are not new. In 1915, the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin defined it as “shopping mania” or “oniomania”. In 1924, Eugen Bleuler redefined it as an “uncontrollable impulse to buy” or “impulsive insanity” alongside kleptomania or pyromania. Recently, it has been redefined as addictive or obsessive-compulsive disorder despite not being included in the reference diagnostic manuals in mental health.
Without a doubt, the loss of control in purchasing, which persists despite its serious consequences for the consumer, is real. However, the limits that separate users from those who do so “pathologically” are not clear , and their arbitrary delimitation of the diagnosis perpetuates the myth that it will be easier to cure through psychopharmacological treatments.
In other words, it contributes to medicalizing one more aspect of daily life, despite the fact that there is no specific effective psychopharmacological treatment. In addition, it diverts attention from the social context in which it occurs.
For many consumers with or without problems, shopping works like going to the pharmacy, as a coping strategy to regulate our mood . Therefore, the differences between a consumer and a consumer with addiction appear to be more quantitative than qualitative.
Shopping obsession, symptoms of a social problem
The loss of control in shopping could be considered not only an individual problem, but the symptom of a social problem. The expression of consumerism, which is characterized by the purchase or accumulation of non-essential goods and services, constitutes the ultimate goal of the economy to guarantee constant growth.
Brands compete to sell more and consumers to buy more. According to economist Victor Lebow, consumerism has become a way of life .
Some of the contextual factors that contribute to explain the increasing loss of control over purchasing are the following:
- The increase in the ease of buying online and through credit cards . This reduces the delay between the urge or desire to buy and the purchase. Currently, it is possible to buy with a single click.
- Time- or unit-limited discounts, deals, and promotions enhance urgency to purchase because we overvalue hard-to-find or supposedly scarce products.
- The mass media and social networks multiply the opportunities to compare ourselves with people beyond our sphere of contact and social class, thus increasing our desires.
- Advertising favors purchases because it overvalues unnecessary material goods and generates new needs that are satisfied through materialistic consumption.
- Fashions favor consumption , rapidly devaluing the value of what was acquired and reinforcing the desire to buy new products.
- Narcissism turns compulsive consumption into a ritual of complacency aimed at satisfying our egos.
- Consumption habits are indicators of our status, acceptance and social prestige . Purchases are a means to maintain or get closer to the desired or sought status. Even if it means saving less or getting into debt, because the inability to consume would affect our esteem and social recognition.
This is important because, paradoxically, consumption is encouraged while purchasing power is increasingly unequal: Eight people earn more than half of the world’s population.
Furthermore, the costs derived from maximizing profit margins by producing more, faster and cheaper are becoming increasingly evident, both in terms of precarious working conditions and in terms of serious environmental deterioration.
Thus, while consumption levels have reached record highs after the pandemic , mental health problems also register record numbers.
Purchases in a consumer society
The success of Black Friday is a symbol of the success of consumerism as a way of life in today’s society , where we consume, replace and discard at an ever-increasing and therefore unsustainable rate .
The irrational, addictive or compulsive nature of shopping, especially during Black Friday, would be the expected result within the dysfunctional context of our consumer society, while a diagnosis simply labels that irrational consumption pattern without explaining why it occurs.
As a consequence, the reduction of compulsive shopping rates cannot be limited to the diagnosis and treatment of individual cases, but it is necessary to act on the social determinants of consumption. Not only adopting ethical, socially responsible and sustainable consumption habits, but also production habits, beyond the search for maximizing the economic profit margin for private companies.
We need more informed and participatory citizens in making decisions that affect them and fewer passive consumers, stunned by marketing and without control over what, how much or how it is consumed or produced.
Pablo Ruisoto, Professor of Psychology, Public University of Navarra.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
