“Wow, what a marvelous Lexus! I bought it 12 years ago!”
When was the last time you had an ecstatic reaction like that on seeing your old Lexus, Mercedes, or Toyota? By now, it is just a car, which gets you from A to B. Truth be told, it was just a car the day you bought it, too. But you had given it extra emotional value. But now, you are habituated to it, to use a psychological term. So you don’t drool over it any more.
More is better?
Not always.
You covet things, for multiple reasons, mostly irrational.
When you buy what you covet, you get a lot of pleasure, a high, if you will. But as time goes on, you get used to that car, that rug, that painting. With time, it gives you less and less pleasure, which is what experts call declining marginal utility.
Then there comes a time when the hassle value of what you have may exceed the slight pleasure you get from it. You have to store your possessions, maintain them, insure them, clean them, dust them off. What a pain!
But we don’t learn.
People are smart, aren’t they?
Not always.
Irrational behavior
For years, conventional economists felt that people behaved in logical, rational ways. They weighed the risks and benefits of their choices, and made decisions that made sense. More recent research has turned this thinking on its head.
Market movements
Many people buy stocks when they are high, and sell when they are low, just the opposite of what is classically taught. The reason is herd behavior: we buy when everybody is buying, and sell when everybody is selling. Thus market panic gets multiplied, often for no good reason, and at least disproportionately.
Our actions are clearly and significantly influenced by those of others, good, bad or ugly.
This is not rational behavior.
Advertising
The marketing experts are also experts in psychology. Their job is to make you buy their product, whether you need it or not. And, quite often, they want you to buy their product in bulk, where possible, and to keep on buying it. For that, they need to manipulate human behavior.
Zero has enormous value
There is no free lunch, we are often told.
But there is the allure of a free lunch. And that is all you need to buy stuff, and keep on buying more stuff. Stuff you may not need, and stuff you would not otherwise buy.
People attending conferences frequently pick up ‘free’ pencils, pens and notebooks at the meeting site. They lug them home, find a place to store them, and eventually just throw them out.
Only to pick up some more at the next conference.
Buy one get one free
This is how many stores manipulate customer behavior to increase their sales and profits. And this reinforces the power of zero, or free.
Say you go to a store to buy a particular type of shirt, perhaps a linen shirt. However, you find a different shirt, advertised as “buy one, get one free.” Human nature being what it is, you will probably buy the one which comes with a free second one. Even if you don’t like it as much as you do the linen shirt you wanted in the first place.
Multiply this scenario thousands of times, and the companies get new customers who would otherwise not have bought their products. After the sale is over, these customers might continue to buy those products, out of sheer habit.
Thus you buy things you didn’t want, in quantities you did not intend to. Before you know it, companies are getting richer, and your home storage capacity is overwhelmed.
And, most of the time, you do not end up more happy. So there really is no free lunch.
Free shipping!
Some online merchants offer free shipping, but only if your order exceeds a certain dollar value. Have you ever been tempted to buy something you did not really need, just to nudge your total order into the ‘free shipping’ range? Me too!
Virtual ownership
Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, describes the powerful influence ‘virtual ownership’ has on us, in his book “Predictably Irrational.” Virtual ownership is a tool frequently used by the advertising industry to lure people into buying their products. You see pictures of a luxury convertible, perhaps with its top down, racing along a glorious coastline, with a young attractive couple in it, having the time of their lives. That picture makes you desire the car. You feel you are there on the coast.The more you see that image, the more you feel as if you ‘virtually’ own the car. Then you want to actually buy it. Whether you can afford it or not.
Desires, cravings, and anger
The Gita, an Indian epic of philosophy and religion, declares:
Dhyayato vishayan punsaha sangas teshu upajayate
Sangat sanjayate kamah kamat krodho abhijayate (Gita 2:62)
Lord Krishna, a Hindu god, explains to his disciple Arjuna how we fall prey to our desires. If we keep thinking frequently about sensory pleasures, we develop an attachment to them. (This seems to be what Dan Ariely calls virtual ownership: we see something alluring, we feel we almost own it after repeated exposure, then we want to actually own it. The Gita, of course, was written thousands of years before Ariely’s time).
Once we develop an attachment to an object, we desire it, we lust after it. And if something or someone comes in our way, or thwarts our desires, we get angry, and often lash out blindly at them. Thus starts the slippery slope of desire, senseless acquisition, and spiritual decay.
So who is smart?
The consumer society enriches businesses, encourages mindless and back-breaking debt, preys upon the weaknesses of the human mind, and does very little to promote human happiness.
Are we not responsible for our own actions, then?
Of course, we are.
However, we need to remind ourselves of the powerful forces which are at play to influence our behavior at a subconscious level. Then we will perhaps be able to combat them better, and channel our pursuit of pleasure and satisfaction in a different, more rewarding direction.
Want to read more?
The Gita is a substantial book of over 700 verses, written in Sanskrit. Numerous translations are available, in many languages.
If you would like to read a selection of its verses, designed to enhance a sense of value and meaning, you can consider my E-book, “How to Lead a Satisfying Life: 11 Universal Lessons From the Gita,” available at … http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W5TGM1U.
So true. Companies really know how to get you to buy more. I finally realized that people should like me for who I am, not what I drive. If they don’t I don’t need their friendship anyway because they do not have their priorities straight.
Which car you drive is much more likely to earn you envy, rather than love or respect.