Why People Buy Things They Don't Need

Citation

Chamberlin, D. (2004), "Why People Buy Things They Don't Need", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 230-232. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760410534803

Here is how the book begins: “Chapter 1 Why do people buy things they don't need? Because they do need!”

Silly me! If I had only peeked at that first page while I was browsing the bookstore, I could have saved the $34.95 cover price!

Dysfunctional behavior by a member of a group is often caused by that person's giving in to a self‐serving need that is greater than his/her need to be a team player. So it is with consumption and purchasing behavior, according to Pamela N. Danziger, the founder and President of Unity Marketing, a marketing consulting outfit. Her experience is in dealing with consumer products and their marketers who prowl the realm of luxury and discretionary spending.

Danzinger is essentially making the point that consumers feel a need for a product or service greater than their need to conserve their funds. She takes the position that “our whole economic system, even our way of life, depends upon the continued, sustained practice of “excessive,” as some see it, American consumerism” (p. 2). The book is, in a way, an apology for the “shop ”til you drop” mentality. Not surprisingly, her Chapter 2 is entitled “What do we need? More than you ever imagined,” and her Chapter 3 is called “If consumer spending is the engine of the economy, then discretionary spending is the gas.” Given that belief, she can easily roam into both “justifiers” of profligate spending and the profiling of heavy users in 30 different discretionary spending categories.

Her Chapter 4 on the so‐called “justifiers” for purchasing things we do not need, thereby turning them into things we do need, is the heart of the book. These are the reasons that give the shopper “permission” to buy – what she calls “stacking various rationally based justifiers in favor of the purchase” (p. 59). Danziger is at least honest enough to see this as the consumer creating an “illusion” (her word) that she is acting rationally in making the purchase. The justifiers each described in some detail in this chapter are:

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  quality of life;

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  pleasure;

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  beautify the home;

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  education;

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  relaxation;

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  entertainment;

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  planned purchase;

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  emotional satisfaction;

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  replace existing item;

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  stress relief;

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  hobby;

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  gift for self;

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  bought on impulse; and

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  status.

The order in which they are listed is the order of their importance as justifiers, according to her research. They range from 89 percent believing the discretionary purchase will improve one's quality of life, to 30 percent justifying the purchase on the basis of status. All this presupposes the consumer is sufficiently self‐aware to be able to identify his/her own purchase motivations, a presupposition most marketers of my acquaintance might be unwilling to entertain. (The research was telephone interviews, n=1,000. The percentages ascribed to each justifier are the combination of “very important” and “somewhat important” responses.)

The primary justifier, quality of life, would seem to subsume many of the other motivators (e.g. pleasure, relaxation, stress relief, etc.). It is also important to remember that this type of interview is somewhat of a fishing expedition, in that the bait was presumably thrown out in the form of justifier‐prompts, to which the respondent rose and took the hook. One might assume that any prompt that was seen to be socially acceptable would be grasped at as a means of justifying the purchase of something one does not need.

The next section of the book contains demographic descriptions of consumers of the top 30 categories of discretionary purchases. The list ranges from videos/music/CDs (at the top of the list as ranked by overall purchase incidence in 2001) to figurines. A three to four‐page “chapterette” is devoted to each of the 30. Four or five demographics are cited at the end of each chapterette as descriptors of the heavier buyers or users of each product grouping. There are few surprises here: books and magazines have higher education levels, higher income, and female skews.

The author's penultimate chapter discusses trends that will influence the purchase of things people do not need. Again, no surprises: aging population, increased education, the rise of minorities, the overabundance of retail space, etc. Perhaps the more interesting trends discussed are the return to reality, coming about as we are sated with everything being “virtual,” and the decline in the amount of time consumers will spend shopping. These factors may well cause major shifts in marketing methods and in the type of product to which the discretionary‐spending consumer is drawn.

The book ends with advice to the marketer faced with the kind of consumer described in this book. He/she is exhorted to sell through emotion, to provide more rationalizers to make the buyer feel less guilty, and to appeal to the buyer's fantasies.

I would not recommend the purchase of this book. Not only does it present little new information, but also its research is rather “light” in nature. As with the consumers she describes, who buy what they do not need, she herself is presenting a book that might not be chosen to become part of our marketing library.