Have you ever gone into a store and bought something you don’t really need?
This happens to many people and one ends up spending money unnecessarily.
This is called impulse buying and founder of the online community Overcoming Overspending, Paige Pritchard, explains why you do it.
Pritchard took to TikTok to share her tips on how to keep impulse buying at bay.
The content creator says that the reason for her video is to “de-influence you out of buying things you don’t need”.
She says that underneath the desire for a new object is a deeper desire for an unmet emotional need.
“So when you buy the product, you’re not actually buying the product. I mean, you are, but you’re not really buying the product for the product,” she says in her clip.
‘You’re either buying yourself an identity or a feeling. Because when it boils down to it, that’s all you really want,” she adds.
“You want to identify as a certain type of person and you want to feel a certain type of way.”
Pritchard uses an example of someone who buys a leather-bound planner.
She says that the person has less desire for the planner itself, but more about wanting to identify as an organised person who has control over their life.
She uses another example of someone who buys anti-ageing cream.
“You’re not actually buying the anti-ageing cream. What you’re buying is confidence,” she explains.
She says when people buy a green drink, it’s not the drink they’re buying but the identity of “somebody who values their health and wants to take care of it”.
She adds that realising a true desire can help one examine purchases — not through a “product lens” — but through “a mental and emotional lens.”
@overcoming_overspending Time for your daily #deinfluencing video. This one will blow your mind 🤯 #deinfluencing #deinfluencer #overspendingmoney #spendingproblems #creditcarddebt #impulsebuying #impulseshopping #moneycoachforwomen #savemoremoney #impulsebuyer #financialliteracy ♬ original sound - Paige-Overcoming Overspending
She says advertising is meant to activate a consumer’s emotions and make them feel like they have a need.
“Advertising is actually trying to sell you either the promise of an identity or the future promise of an emotion,” she explains.
She uses the example of perfume ads, saying that that’s why people don’t really know they’re watching a perfume commercial until the very end.
Advertisers realise the ad is “not actually about the perfume”.
Instead, the commercial “evokes an emotional experience in you that you will then associate to the perfume”.
She says that once people come to understand the true origin of their desires, they can ask themselves two questions:
“What identity do I think that this product is either gonna give me or reinforce?”
“What emotion am I really trying to buy by making this purchase?”
Instead of buying the product, she says, people can ask themselves how they can give themselves the emotion or identity they are hoping the product will produce for them.
Pritchard said that this check-in practice helped her save a “ton of money” in her own life.
IOL Lifestyle