This Cyber Monday, a meditation on holiday sales. A quick trip to pick up presents can turn into an hours-long shopping spree thanks to all the ways stores use research from fields like consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing to entice you. Retailers create urgency and scarcity to push you to give into the emotional part of your brain, motivated by the release of dopamine. But with the help of NPR business correspondent Alina Selyukh, we get into the psychology of sales and discounts: Why it's SO hard to resist the tricks stores use — and some tips to outsmart them. Read Alina's full story here. Questions about the science driving the world around you? Email us at [email protected] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What makes holiday shopping feel overwhelming?
Where didn't we go shopping? Yeah, we walked around a lot. So Alina Selyuk, you're a business correspondent at NPR and you apparently know a lot about malls.
If teenage Alina knew that you can get paid for knowing stuff about the malls, she'd be really impressed. I cover retail, so I have to shop for science.
Right. For science. And you are kind enough to talk to us a little bit about the science involved in shopping, right? Specifically, the psychology of a sale, which is why we went hunting for sales at Pentagon City Mall just outside Washington.
Chapter 2: How do sales influence our emotions?
Yes. And this is the peak holiday shopping season. There is one question that I always get around this time. You can probably guess what it is. I think I can. Are holiday discounts actually a good deal? That's exactly it. Bingo. And that is really subjective. Honestly, sales can be good. They really can. And it really depends on your budget. It depends on how badly you need whatever this item is.
Chapter 3: Are holiday discounts actually a good deal?
Or do you even need this item, right? And none of this is science, to be clear. But there is a field of study called consumer neuroscience. And it has a slightly more controversial sibling or maybe cousin called neuromarketing. Oh, OK. And they both study what happens in your brain when you're making purchasing decisions or just generally wearing the shoes of a consumer.
OK, so what makes neuromarketing controversial?
Chapter 4: What is consumer neuroscience?
It's more commercial. It's the field that advertisers have embraced. So companies use neuromarketing to get people to fall in love with their brand or to buy their stuff. So some researchers have split off into consumer neuroscience, presenting it as a less corporate field, if that makes sense. But they're definitely linked.
And they confirm this idea that something does happen in your brain when you encounter a discount.
It's not really that complicated as far as science goes, but it's all about the sense of urgency, scarcity, with a sprinkling of imaginative anticipation and FOMO, really.
Today on the show, your brain on discounts.
I'm here to tell you about how you process a sale, how stores push your buttons, and how to outsmart them.
I'm Regina Barber. I'm Alina Siluk. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
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Chapter 5: How does urgency affect shopping decisions?
How do you feel about shopping?
I feel pretty overwhelmed. There are like way too many things. I don't know what to choose. It's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure and we haven't even started. Yeah. Yeah. So you don't have a list. Don't have a list. Do you have a budget? I should, but I don't. You don't have a budget. But I want to save money. good start. This is a great start. I should have been better prepared. Yes.
Okay. So the mall was huge and it was busy. And standing in that food court, I definitely felt unprepared.
I mean, this is kind of the perfect recipe for the stores of that mall. You know, they are thrilled when people like us come in without a plan, with no list, with no budget. It's kind of ideal for them. Right. Because here's what happens when you shop. In your brain, there's a constant push and pull between what can be described as the emotional and the rational parts.
The human brain has essentially evolved to feel first and think next.
That's Carolyn Yoon, who's one of the top experts on consumer neuroscience. She's a professor of marketing at the Michigan Ross School of Business.
Whenever you see anything like some stimulus, like a chocolate chip cookie that smells really great, that immediately activates your nucleus accumbens, which is a part of this area called the ventral striatum, which is a key part of the reward circuitry.
So that's where you get that dopamine hit, right? The neurotransmitter that motivates us and... pumps you up to buy some cool new thing like when we went to Claire's with my daughter Dory, that accessory store that's like a magnet for teens and tweens.
All right, are you ready? I'm so ready. Wait, wait, don't look, don't look. How do you feel right now? I feel okay. Okay, now look at the sale. Buy three, get three free. Clearance for $2. I feel like they have that every day. Everything is so sparkly. Sparkly and shiny. Butterfly! They're jingle bells.
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Chapter 6: What happens in your brain when you see a sale?
Humans don't go and buy everything because they realize that they're thinking about their finances. So the ability to think can override the emotional state. But when people are stressed out or it's the holidays, it requires that much more cognitive resources, which is why I think when people go shopping under stress, that can be quite dangerous.
That was definitely me shopping under stress. We're living on the edge. But so far, process-wise, pretty straightforward, right? We see something we like, we get excited, then we go, whoa, that's expensive. It's like a mental scale with the dopamine-fueled reward mechanism motivating you on one side and the internal accountant on the other side in your frontal cortex.
Now, guess what happens when you add a sale to the mix? The accountant freaks out. Yes, a sale is like the thumb that tips your mental scale toward buying. Jorge Barraza, who is a consumer psychologist at the University of Southern California, says that just finding a sale, just seeing it, actually registers often as a win already. Of course. It's like delivering its own bolt of joy.
Just the fact that they're getting a discount or they're perceiving that they're getting a discount, the consumers, is rewarding in and of itself. So not only are we getting the product, but we're also getting that reward that we found something and we've earned this extra thing.
Talking to Jorge, I immediately was like, it's our lizard brain. Like that ancient part of our brain that just like can't help itself.
Yeah. And we were on Zoom and you could just see physically how much he hated that whole line of questioning.
We want to simplify what's happening in the brain. And sometimes that simplification can be oversimplified and creates a caricature of something that's not really true.
Wow. Okay.
So no lizard brain. Forget it. Our brains are too complex for these basic metaphors.
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Chapter 7: How does stress affect shopping behavior?
Chapter 8: What role does anticipation play in buying?
Yeah. And we were on Zoom and you could just see physically how much he hated that whole line of questioning.
We want to simplify what's happening in the brain. And sometimes that simplification can be oversimplified and creates a caricature of something that's not really true.
Wow. Okay.
So no lizard brain. Forget it. Our brains are too complex for these basic metaphors.
Okay. So let's get back to the sales. We left them as we were weighing down our internal scales with some false sense of reward and freaking out our poor little accountant. Yes.
And sales create a sense of urgency and a sense of scarcity. And these are the two building blocks of impulse shopping.
Right. Like the sale is happening today while supplies last. You know,
Today only everyone is here and they're buying that one thing that you want. Stores also use all kinds of tricks to sway your internal accountant toward buying. For example, there's decoy pricing. Like picture a store shelf where you have two bags of, let's say, candy. One is smaller and one's larger. How do you get people to buy the bigger bag of the two?
You add a decoy third option, and that's a medium bag that's much smaller than the largest bag, but only slightly cheaper.
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