A good deal or a good deal of waste? How to be more conscious about your consumption during sales periods

The Guardian

28-06-2025

Whether the discount is offered on social media, via email or in a banner on your favourite website, if a business you've ever been a patron of is having a sale you can be sure they'll find a way to tell you.
'Temporary sales events are aimed at leveraging FOMO,' says Jason Pallant, a senior lecturer in marketing at RMIT University. 'The idea is to make consumers feel like they will miss out on a great bargain if they don't buy something right away.'
While it can feel good to click 'buy now' in the moment, ending up with piles of barely used impulse purchases leads to a particular kind of shame, regret (and clutter). With the end-of-financial-year sales period upon us, here are some strategies to ensure you are being conscious about your on-sale consumption.
Believe it or not, our brains are wired to encourage us to buy things at a reduced price, especially when there is a sense of urgency – ie during sales and promotions.
Cathrine Jansson-Boyd, a professor of consumer psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, says this is because of three things. 'When we see a price tag that we perceive as a good deal, the part of our brains that deals with pleasure is activated,' she says. Then, when we make a purchase, we get a dopamine hit that makes us feel good and, finally, when there is a time limit on the availability of the discounted price, it triggers heightened adrenaline. This combination means sales shopping can make people 'feel giddy with excitement'.
Being aware of this dynamic and recognising it when temptation arises is the first step to exercising self-control and resisting the urge to make an impulse purchase.
The second step is to take 'a calm pause between looking at an item and purchasing', says Dr Kate Luckins, the author of Live More With Less. This should help to 'counter the frenzy of the sale'.
If you're shopping in store, one way to do this is by holding on to the item while you continue browsing and delay heading to the checkout. Or, if you're shopping online, stand up and walk away from your computer or put down your phone and do something else to see if the shine of the product wears off. Alternatively, sleep on it.
'In that pause, you will either obsess over the item you're considering, or you will move on and forget about it,' Luckins says.
So as not to miss out on the savings promotional periods offer, Stephanie Atto from Australian Consumer and Retail Studies recommends keeping a list of products you are looking to buy and sticking to the list during sales periods. 'To resist sales pressures, consumers should focus on being informed and assertive,' she says. 'Be prepared by understanding your needs, doing your research and setting a budget.'
The popularity of this strategy is borne out by data. Pallant says the increased frequency of sales periods has trained consumers to wait to make purchases. 'A recent shopper survey from Mailchimp suggests 76% of consumers use these events to buy products they were planning to buy anyway.'
Although it might feel like being increasingly online gives retailers an advantage, Pallant suggests inverting this dynamic by keeping track of what you want to buy, what a good price is and gathering your own data.
'Do your research about how often these brands or products go on sale and what a good discount really is,' he says. 'There are so many sales events now that if you miss out on one, you might only have to wait a couple of weeks for another.'
Given the frequency of email and social media marketing, you can do yourself a favour ahead of time by 'setting tech limits', Atto says. This can be as simple as running through your inbox and unsubscribing from brands and retailers that always seem to be communicating promotions, or unfollowing social media accounts that do the same.
As the designer and poet William Morris said: 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.' Regardless of how much your dopamine-hungry brain is calculating you will save with the purchase of an item, once you've bought it, it's yours – so it's worth assessing whether it is a good investment.
Try exercising some reverse Marie Kondo (the decluttering expert) and ask before the purchase: Does this item truly bring me joy? In six months, when I am cleaning out my cupboards, is its quality so good that I will still be proud to own it?
The flip side of this is that shopping on sale can be an opportunity to buy something of beautiful quality or craftsmanship that might normally be out of your budget. 'Buying one piece or product we love rather than a bunch we kind of like at a discount is much more satisfying in the long term,' Luckins says.
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