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
Full Episode
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hi, Gina. Hey, how's it going? This is my daughter, Dory. You want to say hi? Hi. Alina, I'm so excited to go shopping with you. It's going to be amazing. So I guess we should tell people why we're weirdly recording. Yes. At a mall next to a Christmas tree. We are next to a giant Christmas tree.
We're going to look for sales, right? We're going to look for sales and we're going to talk about how sales make us feel. All right, let's do it. Where are we going to go shopping?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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