Parade Magazine: Buyer Beware

What really goes on in our minds when we face the decision to buy something? That’s what I and a team of researchers tried to find out by studying the brains of shoppers around the world as they encountered various products, ads, and sales. Knowing the science behind what influences us to make purchases—whether they’re needed or not—can help us resist temptation. Here are five tips to help you make it through your shopping experience without breaking the bank.

Leave the Kids At Home

Consumers accompanied by children bought 40% more items than consumers who were shopping by themselves. Children, bless their little hearts, tend to use a variety of techniques to coax their parents into buying more stuff. These can range from negotiation (“I’ll clean up my room if you buy me those Lucky Charms”) to threats (screaming, crying, having a tantrum in the middle of the store) to sneaking the things they want underneath your other purchases. When you finally get to the cash register, chances are good that you’ll be too embarrassed—or worried about coming across as mean or cheap—to say anything.

Watch Out for Fake Bargains

The way signs and words are used can have a powerful effect on our brains. Take one store’s display of canned chicken-noodle soup. A sign above it read “$1.95 per can.” Customers pushed right past the pyramid of cans because $1.95 sounded like way too much money for chicken-noodle anything. The next day, a new sign left off the price and said, “Maximum 8 cans per customer.” The result: customers waiting in line. Another example: You pass by a box of spaghetti marked $2.50. A few days later, the same box features a sign reading “2 for $5.” You don’t consider that it’s the same price. You’re too busy snatching up as many boxes as you can.

Both of these “bargains” stimulate our natural hoarding instinct. A small region in the prefrontal cortex of our brains is associated with collecting. Scientists believe that it reacts as it did earlier in our evolution, when food supplies may have been scarce. In other words, we’re hardwired to respond to shortages by doing all we can to ensure our survival. The result? A lot of soup and a lot of pasta.

Avoid Big Carts

Strange but true: People buy roughly 30% more items when they shop with a big cart than when they don’t. And the bigger the cart we’re wheeling around the store, the more likely we are to stock it full of stuff we probably don’t need.

What’s the reason for this phenomenon? I believe consumers become self-conscious if their big shopping cart contains, say, only a celebrity magazine and a few sticks of gum. It’s as though we expect other shoppers to look down on us or even make a disparaging comment. Another thing: If our cart is enormous, the dopamine levels in our brain increase, and we begin pulling things down from the shelf to fill up every square inch. Dopamine is one of the most addictive chemicals our brain produces. It increases in anticipation of any kind of reward, and that includes food and clothing.

My suggestion: Avoid a shopping cart altogether and use a small basket with handles.

Don’t Sniff!

Ever wonder why more and more supermarkets are installing bakeries, rotisserie-chicken grills, salad bars, and snack-food outposts so near their entrances? It’s because smells can entice us into buying food even if we don’t really want it (and especially if we’re shopping on an empty stomach).

Smell is our most primal human sense. When we sniff something, the odor receptors in our noses make a beeline to our limbic system, which governs our emotions, memories, and sense of well-being. The fragrance of just-baked bread, for example, not only gives off a signal of freshness, it also evokes powerful feelings of comfort and domesticity. Supermarkets know that when the aroma of baking bread or doughnuts hits your nose, you’ll get hungry and start picking up food you had no intention of buying. (Not just bread, butter, and jam, either, but all kinds of produce.) Our gut response is instantaneous, meaning we don’t stand a chance. So bulk up before you go out.

Beware Of Shopaholism

Leave your credit cards at home when you shop. Using a debit card is OK, since it draws money directly from your checking or savings account. But when we slap down a credit card, we often feel as though we have unlimited funds at our disposal. That is, until the monthly statement shows up.

There are roughly 17 million “shopaholics” in the United States—people addicted to the feelings of reward, pleasure, and well-being that the brain chemical dopamine produces.

The average American household has accumulated about $10,000 in credit-card debt. As most consumers know, it can take years and a whole lot of self-discipline to dig yourself out of this hole. Don’t get into one if you can help it.