How to survive the 24x7 sale season

What used to be an annual event is now a year-round medley. If you want to join the resistance, here’s how to frame the fight-back.

If you’re drawn to discounts (who isn’t?) it’s getting tougher to hold on to your resolve. What used to be an annual event is now a year-round medley of Festive, End of Season, Republic Day, Independence Day, Singles’ Day, Clearance and Flash sales.

Everything you’ve ever looked at online has an afterlife as a targeted ad. Except it’s now 60% off + 15% more on the app + 5% more via UPI + 3% more if you subscribe to the newsletter. “Sale-obsessed shoppers ultimately spend more money than non-sale shoppers,” says Kit Yarrow, American consumer psychologist, in her 2014 book Decoding the New Consumer Mind. If you want to join the resistance, here’s how to frame the fight-back.

Anchor pricing: YouTuber Nick Kolenda, who draws on psychological research to decode everyday behaviour, says context determines how we respond to a price tag. A common sales technique is to display “the cost of their products next to a higher alternative, often the original retail price or a more expensive variant,” he says, in a post about pricing strategies. This “anchors” your brain into accepting what something should cost. So that you are more comfortable buying the item at its supposedly reduced price.

Fight back: Use your own anchors. Measure the price of an item by what you earn per hour, or additional vacation days you’d rather have, or just what it’s worth to you. Suddenly, that calfskin jacket, marked down 50%, is worth two working days, and looks less tempting than a hotel-room upgrade on your next break.

Impulse-buying: Researchers have been studying it since the 1950s. Retailers have been manipulating it for far longer. In shops, they’d put impulse buys in the window display. Online, these products dominate pop-up ads. These end up being the items that sell out fastest at a sale — because we’ve already been primed to want them. Unsurprisingly, they trigger the most buyers’ remorse.

Fight back: Deploy your previous purchases as a shield. “I screenshot the things I’ve bought and regretted,” says Pramila J, a crafts professional from Mumbai who professes a weakness for party heels. “So when temptation strikes, I look through my phone and know not to buy more.”

Sensation-seeking: For many, the idea of scoring a bargain is more attractive than the item itself. So at a sale, they’ll lap up the “Hot Deals” not knowing that many of the products have been available at the same discount for months. Worse, they don’t realise that prices were often inflated before the sale, then discounted down to the original price.

Fight back: Yarrow’s book has simple advice — only buy something if you wanted it before it went on sale. Alternatively, if something looks exciting, wait 20 minutes. That’s how long it takes “for your head to resume control once you’ve become emotionally worked up”, Yarrow says.

Automation and algorithms: Online pricing systems often raise or drop prices based on available stocks and buyer data. Meanwhile, algorithms track which sites you visit most, how long you stared at that calfskin jacket, what else you looked at and how often you click on ads offering discounts. That information, put together, is a veritable portrait of your interests and weaknesses.

Fight back: Analyse your buying patterns yourself. Do you tend to shop when you’re up at night? Distracted at work? After an argument? Just before breakfast? Use that data to determine if your next purchase is driven by need or habit. And beat algorithms at their own game. “Until October, all the ads I’d see were for shoes,” says Pramila. “I took half an hour to visit every hardware site I could find. Now, all I see are ads for power drills, which I’d never want. I click on one every now and then, to keep fooling the bots.”

Anticipatory regret: Researchers coined this term for the emotion being elicited by those “Limited Time”, “Early Bird”, “Members Only” and “Festive Season” discount tags. They exist to get buyers to believe they’re on to a select opportunity and will regret it if they pass it up.

Fight back: Yarrow suggests leaving products in your e-cart for 24 hours to test if the attraction fades (or is replaced by a better deal). You should also try creating your own festive seasons, by buying consumer goods when you know they will be at their lowest prices — swimwear after summer, yoga pants after January resolution period, gym equipment in the monsoon, jewellery between gifting seasons. Sadly, there are never banners to announce this. You’ll have to put your own calendar together.

Bulking and bundling: You know who’s easiest to sell to? Someone who’s already shopping on your site. Hence the “Buy More, Save More” ruse. It makes you feel you’ve won – a bigger discount, free shipping, cashback, air miles, cinema vouchers, the cosmetic pouch – even though you spent more than you intended and have frills you didn’t want.

Fight back: Instead of thinking you’ll “check out a site and see what they have”, create bulk in your own brain. Examine the items in your closet or electronics drawer. See what needs replacing, and which gaps need to be filled. Then start browsing. You’ll be better prepared to find items you’ll appreciate.

And finally: Sales look unmissable because retailers want them to. But shopping is not an experience that obligates buying a souvenir at the end. Remind yourself that if you’re paying for it, it’s not a reward. Or as Yarrow writes, “coming home with nothing is better than coming home with useless clutter”.