Shopping Part 3: Willpower

This is the third post in a three part series about shopping. The first post was about shopping and women and the second was about shopping and emotion

I almost never go shopping just for the sake of it, and am reasonably good at only buying reasonable things rationalising any purchases I make. However, one place I seem to fall down again and again is in Boots where I seem unable to leave without dropping £30 on toiletries. This is despite ‘deciding’ not to buy any more. So why does my willpower always crack in Boots?

Location of purchases

Supermarkets know that slowing people down increases their purchases, and so they place popular items halfway along aisles to force people to walk past more goods. A research company tracked the positions of mobile phones to plot how long people were in the store, and found that as ‘dwell time’ rose 1%, sales rose 1.3%, so this effect is worth pursuing for retailers. I usually go Boots because I genuinely need 2 or 3 basic items such as shampoo or toothpaste, but its supermarket style layout never has those at the front! Once I’ve treked to the right sections, the bombardment of choice often paralyses me for a while, dithering over cost per 100ml, offers, and jojoba oil vs ... who am I kidding, this jojoba conditioner is by far the best I’ve ever found. Unfortunately, all of that ‘dithering’ time quite quickly increases the chance of you me buying more stuff.

Peer pressure

To be honest, I like to think I’m immune to this. I don’t tend to feel pressure to keep up with people, and I buy Vogue which contains fashion so expensive that I see it more as an art book than a magazine of things I would ever purchase. Unfortunately, if I examine myself more carefully, I am influenced by what I see, and unfortunately what I see is quite expensive. The environment I work in, and my tendency to follow the most beautiful blogs means that I start to ‘normalise’ unnecessary items such as a loved aubergine handbag for work. (Unnecessary given that when I bought it I already had a black, a red, a brown and a yellow one appropriate for work)./p>

There is a great article here about spending based on who you are, not who you want to be. As J.D. points out, you have no way of knowing if the Jones have funded their lifestyle on debt anyway, so the notion of ‘keeping up’ really makes no sense. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this at some point...

Sugar!

The biggest Boots I know is right beside my office and is open late, so when I need something I will usually pop in at lunchtime or after finishing work. Either way, my blood sugar is probably low. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for Boots, self-control is a finite resource, and is depleted with various behaviours, including making many choices, fixing attention or controlling thoughts. This energy model was tested by psychologists who found that just like a muscle, self-control can be strengthened, and gets tired as it is used. Earlier studies showed that acts of self-control caused reductions in blood-glucose levels, which in turn predicted poor self-control. Increasing the glucose in the blood (yay, chocolate) counteracted this fatigue.

This goes some way to explaining my madness in Boots - they confuse me by sending me around the whole store, I’m surrounded by things that I think I need for shiny hair and sparkly eyes, I’m tired with low blood sugar, and so have no self-control. And a large amount of toiletries already at home. Much as I would like to say this means I need to eat chocolate before going to Boots, it seems as though I’ll just have to make sure I go to a smaller shop at the weekend when I’m awake. With a list!