It’s madness I tell ya! Madness!
Tuesday morning we spoke about the disaster that was left behind at a Sears in Kitchener, Ont. the other day as people searched chaotically for that one absolutely fantastic deal.
To say the place was left a complete and utter mess is a total understatement. On a video posted to YouTube by regular dude Ryan Visima who went into the store, not for a sale, but “out of morbid curiosity” you can see boxes, wrappers, shoes, clothing etc all strewn on the floor with nary a sales associate in sight.
In an interview with Global News Ryan said “there wasn’t much they (the sale associates) could’ve done at that point.”
If you’re a sales associate at Sears these days you’re probably feeling overwhelmed about a great many things…not just an incredible mess in your department.
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READ MORE: Video shows chaos and clutter at Sears store after liquidation sales
However that’s another story.
My point in this story is what drives people to this level of sales fever?
In this video you can see people down on all fours going through boxes to see if they can find matching shoes or maybe a top that matches a pair of pants they have stuffed in a bag.
It almost looks like looting.
Then there are other people wandering around with their faces agape wondering what the heck happened in there.
There is a book called Urge written by consumer scientist James Mourey, an assistant professor at the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University in Chicago.
He says the idea that an item, whatever it happens to be, is scarce and the sale is limited – even if you know you might be able to get that same item at a comparable price another time or somewhere else – will get shoppers thinking in an irrational way.
It is the fear of missing out, he says, that leads people to line up at stores even though they’re wise to the marketing gimmicks or may be upset about a store’s reputation.
“Even though people are somewhat annoyed with the idea they’re being manipulated, they still think it’s a good bargain and they can’t stand the idea of missing out.”
I totally understand that logic. I get it.
There are bargain hunters out there that put their reputations among their circle of friends on the line every time they go shopping and if they come home empty handed or worse, paid regular price for something, they’ll have some explaining to do…perhaps even some humble pie to swallow.
And we all love that, right?
Still with all of this interesting psychological analysis at hand the behavior continues. We hear about it every year at Black Friday and Boxing Day sales.
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Fights erupting in line-ups, aisles and parking lots. Not just fights, in some cases brawls. Like something right out of WWE Monday Night Raw.
As for me, I’ll just go down the across the mall and pay five bucks more.
Doesn’t that beat winding up on YouTube down on all fours under a pile of wildly strewn clothing looking for a matching size 10 shoe?
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