For my media(ted) art(i)FACT, I brought in a 2-Disc Limited Edition version of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Now I needed no motivation to buy this movie partly because it was a gift and partly because I love all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and want to own them just on principle, but the “only available for a short time” gag has gotten me before. I loved Disney movies when I was a kid and sometimes I enjoy watching them again but that does not mean that I want to own all of them. But every time they take a movie out of the “Disney Vault” and claim that they are going to lock it up again soon, I have the urge to buy it. (This is how I ended up with both Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast, each of which I have watched exactly once.) I always ask myself, “what if I want it later and I can’t get it?”
Limiting the availability of a product is a great way to manipulate consumers. It makes the product appear special and more valuable and makes the consumer take into consideration whether they might want it not just right now but at some point in their lives. I would not have gotten those Disney movies when I did, if I had known I would be able to get them any time I wanted.
Sales use the same concept. Certain products cost less, but only for a limited time. This causes many consumers to stock up on items they might not have otherwise gotten because they feel they are getting “more for their money.” With Thanksgiving coming up, Black Friday is a perfect example of the effectiveness of this tactic. Tens of thousands of people get up ridiculously early and flood stores, trampling each other and generally acting crazy because this is the one day of the year that they can buy products at a drastically reduced price.
I had never realized quite how much power the retail industry has over the way we spend our time and money.
The ability to make something feel limited somehow always manages to make us feel as if it's now or never. Even if we know better, we follow the impulse. Somehow we always manage to override logic with in the moment logic that says we'll need whatever sometime in the future. In some ways, the limited time reminds us that all of our time is limited, so we try and enjoy it the best we can. Well, that and we think the sale is good. All our mind needs is a moment to invent a reason to want something that is on sale and we'll end up getting it.
ReplyDeleteDisney makes things worse because we grew up with it. There are memeories attached to it from our childhood. We remember things as being better than they actually were, making it all something that we want. It makes us prone to buying what is familiar, no matter how we think of the thing now. We do it for the memories and for the want to return to the innocent, "better" days.
Combining them both creates a pressure to buy the product. Our past gives us happy memories, while our ideas of the future shows what can happen if said thing is taken away. The only way we think we can be happy in that future is to buy the product. More than likely, the thing ends up sitting somewhere out of sight.