Dates like Black Friday This is a great time to better understand how our brains work. In fact, large companies e-commercelike Amazon, are very clear about this operation. They may not be backed by neuroscientists, but through trial and error they have found the perfect ways to hack our brains and make us buy more. One of the most useful tricks in this sense is flash offers or flash sales.
In fact, this is not unique to Amazon. More and more stores are including them in their online sales. You have 24 hours, sometimes less, to decide if you want to buy the item at a reduced price. If you think about it too much, the offer disappears. This is usually done on marked dates, e.g.l Black Friday, one-day sales, Amazon Prime or summer or winter sales.
In all these moments, we sometimes catch ourselves looking to buy something instead of what we need. We scour the flash offerings of the websites we like best, looking for the product we want. We don’t limit ourselves to finding what we know we need. But why do we do this? The key truly lies in our brain.
Tricks to hack your brain on Black Friday
In an article published in TalkProfessor of Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University Katherine Jansson-Boyd explains that deals attract us because they activate our brain reward systems.
It is a series of reactions that involve several areas of the brain, but one in particular called nucleus accumbens. Rewards are generated in response to incentives that are considered evolutionarily advantageous for us as a species. For example, sex activates reward systems because the more sex we have, the more likely we are to maintain the species. Eat chocolate too, because although it is not a healthy food, it provides high levels of energy, very useful for survival in times of scarcity. In all these cases the reward is a shot dopamine which gives us great pleasure. Thus, we associate this action with pleasure and want to continue doing it.
Unfortunately, there are substances, such as tobacco, that also act on these systems, although they do not bring us the slightest benefit. Regarding the matter of dealsIt’s partly beneficial because we save money, but it gives us pleasure in a confusing way. During Black Friday, we might buy a really cheap air fryer for fun, but then it will end up sitting in the kitchen cupboard because it’s not something we really need.
But our brain doesn’t understand that we don’t need it. Just find a good deal and start the rewards system. This happens with any offer, but especially with those that have short shelf lifelike flash offers.
Flash offers are a special case
As explained in the article for Psychology today psychology teacher Whale Yarrowfrom Golden Gate University in San Francisco, sense of urgency Something positive overstimulates the autonomic nervous system, causing us to experience a kind of foggy thoughts. It took us about 20 minutes to think clearly again.
Therefore, it is quite possible that during this period of time we will buy something that we do not need. The fog, discharged by unnecessary emotions, prevents us from thinking about buying. rational.
Additionally, Black Friday Flash Deals impact our feeling of loss aversion. According to an article by a health economist Shahram Heshmatthis phenomenon is based on the fact that people we place more importance on negative emotions than positive ones. This is why failure usually bothers us more than progress makes us happy. This also has some evolutionary benefit in that it helps us focus on correcting mistakes. However, in some cases this becomes extreme.
Losses hurt twice as much as gains make us happy, and this is something that is constantly observed in our lives. behavior as consumers. Heshmat cites a study that examined how demand for a given brand of egg changes when the price increases or decreases from the usual price. A 10% price increase reduced demand by 7.8%. On the other hand, a decrease of 10%, instead of an increase in demand by about 7.8%, only increased it by 3.3%. The consequences of the negative were more noticeable than the consequences of the positive.
This is exactly what happens with flash deals on days like Black Friday. We are very afraid of losing the dealbut we don’t think about the positive aspects of saving money. When this is combined with brain fog, the hacking of our brain is complete.
That is why on days like these, experts recommend working on impulsiveness. It is logical that we want to take advantage of the offers, but without getting carried away with this control of our brain. It’s best to make lists what we need, and if we see it among the flash offers, so much the better. Also, if we are buying in a store and are afraid that someone will take this cheap item, we can take it and walk around the store with it for a while before placing the order. As time passes and the fog clears, we may no longer feel the urgency to buy it.
Source: Hiper Textual
