Female Shopaholics Face Debt Crisis
27/02/2007
Shopaholicism is becoming increasingly common in the UK and it is thrusting many into the jaws of financial strife, a new report claims.
For the purposes of its eye-opening study, uSwitch defined shopaholics as those for whom 50 per cent or more of their unsecured debt can be attributed to fashion. The impartial price comparison service has calculated that there are 765,642 British women fighting against this level of profligacy, with some spending more than £1,800 a year on clothes.
The research suggests that these shopaholics have an average personal shopping debt of more than £8,000, contributing to a collective debt of £61.96 million.
According to uSwitch, credit card debt among British women as a whole has now topped £11 billion and unsecured loans for this group have reached an astonishing £20 billion. British women also have an average overdraft in excess of £500 and a third rely on this every single month. Total overdraft debt among women in the UK, on the basis of these figures, has now reached £4.6 billion.
Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy, for uSwitch, observed: "Fat used to be a feminist issue, but it looks like it's been overtaken by debt. In today's celebrity obsessed society, where women emulate the lifestyles and shopping habits of their favourite fashionistas, it's not surprising that women are becoming more interested in size zero than nought per cent APR."
Research suggests that female shopaholics earn an average of £18,959 a year, which is slightly higher than the national average of £17,784. Unsurprisingly, these individuals have only managed to save £4,485, which compares to an average of £10,525.
Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol have the greatest concentration of shopaholics, but the Brummies are leading the way in terms of the amount of money spent. Shopaholics in Birmingham are spending an average of £1,813 a year on clothes and shoes.
Interestingly, research company Mintel reported in 2004 that shopaholic women were something of a dying breed in the UK. More than a quarter of those questioned said that they disliked shopping and would only head to clothes shops when absolutely necessary.
http://www.financedaily.co.uk/showNews.aspx?loadID=00322
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Sunday, 15 June 2008
The Psychology of Shopping / At your Leisure - 14 March 2005
At your Leisure - 14 March 2005
The Psychology of Shopping
Image copyright: Lotus Head, stock.xchng
The 1970s giants of retailing made it their business to 'pile it high, sell it cheap'. Organisations such as Tesco and Walmart made their names by following this policy. The thinking was that consumers would buy as long as they believed they were getting cheap prices and that the goods were of reasonable quality.
In the past thirty years, retailers have become increasingly sophisticated in their methods of parting consumers from their money. In grocery markets, shops have used a range of techniques to create the right conditions psychologically for consumers to buy what the retailers want them to buy: the aroma of freshly-baked bread is often wafted through a supermarket in order to stimulate demand for products from the in-store bakery, or just to make shoppers feel hungry.
But what other methods are there? Where is the limit to the use of psychological techniques in retailing? How can store design be used to maximise revenues? This 'At your Leisure' takes a look at the retail experience presented to UK shoppers and how the use of space can be applied to the design of the urban environment. It also analyses how one retail giant, IKEA, has harnessed some of these psychological techniques in its store design. Finally we ask whether some of IKEA's marketing techniques may call into question their ability to ensure the safety of their customers.
What psychological techniques are in use?
Image: Products with the highest margins are stocked at eye-level in supermarkets. Copyright: Dan Tinianow, stock.xchng
Shopping is a major leisure activity. Try asking many people what they like to do in their spare time and you can guarantee that a large number of them will nominate a trip to their local mall. Why is this? What do we get out of the shopping experience? Is it all about the therapeutic benefit of buying a product or service that we desperately want? Or are other forces at work when we enter the shopping centre? Let's look at some standard techniques which have long been seen as successful in retail markets. Examples of these include the following:
Pricing at psychologically sensitive points, for example at £29.99
Locating so-called 'anchor' stores in malls/shopping arcades, attracting people into the mall and increasing sales throughout the centre by boosting footfall to other stores
Additionally, the benefits of using so-called 'shelf psychology' are applied widely by high street retailers:
Products identified by the retailer as impulse buys are placed at the ends of aisles
Own-brand products are positioned alongside premium brands, often leading to consumers buying a cheaper choice own-brand item rather than a premium priced one
Stacking the products with the highest margins (products with the greatest difference between cost to retailer and revenue gained from selling it to a consumer) at eye-level, as it is known that consumers are more likely to buy products in their line of sight
Retail business organisations also try to gain benefit by designing the shopping experience in order to maximise revenue. They often base this policy on some well-known features of human psychology, namely that:
We are more at ease when shopping in or walking through urban areas when others are around us
The routes we use follow clear lines of sight
These features mean that urban areas where it's hard to see from one point to another are avoided by shoppers. As a psychological response to these conditions, we simply don't want to be there. Left as they are, these areas will wither and die.
What does this mean for UK urban areas?
Use of innovative techniques of urban design to create better, more attractive and safer places
A company at the forefront of this work is Space Syntax Limited whose techniques were developed at University College London and commercially 'spun out' as an urban environment consultancy
The company's methods can be used to breath new life into areas and can be applied to towns and cities and their retail or historical centres
Projects that Space Syntax have been involved in include the Millennium Bridge between Tate Modern and St Paul's, London
Image: The Millennium Bridge between Tate Modern and St Paul's, London. Copyright: mmuzxer, stock.xchng
What of the out-of-town shops, the carpet warehouses, furniture showrooms and electrical superstores?
They tend to adopt similar techniques, but in these locations which are often on main trunk roads and motorways, the car is king
This is especially true where consumers have no choice but to transport their purchases home themselves
Some of these businesses have successfully combined the techniques of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) markets with selling larger, traditionally higher value products. One of the best examples of this is IKEA.
The Psychology of Shopping
Image copyright: Lotus Head, stock.xchng
The 1970s giants of retailing made it their business to 'pile it high, sell it cheap'. Organisations such as Tesco and Walmart made their names by following this policy. The thinking was that consumers would buy as long as they believed they were getting cheap prices and that the goods were of reasonable quality.
In the past thirty years, retailers have become increasingly sophisticated in their methods of parting consumers from their money. In grocery markets, shops have used a range of techniques to create the right conditions psychologically for consumers to buy what the retailers want them to buy: the aroma of freshly-baked bread is often wafted through a supermarket in order to stimulate demand for products from the in-store bakery, or just to make shoppers feel hungry.
But what other methods are there? Where is the limit to the use of psychological techniques in retailing? How can store design be used to maximise revenues? This 'At your Leisure' takes a look at the retail experience presented to UK shoppers and how the use of space can be applied to the design of the urban environment. It also analyses how one retail giant, IKEA, has harnessed some of these psychological techniques in its store design. Finally we ask whether some of IKEA's marketing techniques may call into question their ability to ensure the safety of their customers.
What psychological techniques are in use?
Image: Products with the highest margins are stocked at eye-level in supermarkets. Copyright: Dan Tinianow, stock.xchng
Shopping is a major leisure activity. Try asking many people what they like to do in their spare time and you can guarantee that a large number of them will nominate a trip to their local mall. Why is this? What do we get out of the shopping experience? Is it all about the therapeutic benefit of buying a product or service that we desperately want? Or are other forces at work when we enter the shopping centre? Let's look at some standard techniques which have long been seen as successful in retail markets. Examples of these include the following:
Pricing at psychologically sensitive points, for example at £29.99
Locating so-called 'anchor' stores in malls/shopping arcades, attracting people into the mall and increasing sales throughout the centre by boosting footfall to other stores
Additionally, the benefits of using so-called 'shelf psychology' are applied widely by high street retailers:
Products identified by the retailer as impulse buys are placed at the ends of aisles
Own-brand products are positioned alongside premium brands, often leading to consumers buying a cheaper choice own-brand item rather than a premium priced one
Stacking the products with the highest margins (products with the greatest difference between cost to retailer and revenue gained from selling it to a consumer) at eye-level, as it is known that consumers are more likely to buy products in their line of sight
Retail business organisations also try to gain benefit by designing the shopping experience in order to maximise revenue. They often base this policy on some well-known features of human psychology, namely that:
We are more at ease when shopping in or walking through urban areas when others are around us
The routes we use follow clear lines of sight
These features mean that urban areas where it's hard to see from one point to another are avoided by shoppers. As a psychological response to these conditions, we simply don't want to be there. Left as they are, these areas will wither and die.
What does this mean for UK urban areas?
Use of innovative techniques of urban design to create better, more attractive and safer places
A company at the forefront of this work is Space Syntax Limited whose techniques were developed at University College London and commercially 'spun out' as an urban environment consultancy
The company's methods can be used to breath new life into areas and can be applied to towns and cities and their retail or historical centres
Projects that Space Syntax have been involved in include the Millennium Bridge between Tate Modern and St Paul's, London
Image: The Millennium Bridge between Tate Modern and St Paul's, London. Copyright: mmuzxer, stock.xchng
What of the out-of-town shops, the carpet warehouses, furniture showrooms and electrical superstores?
They tend to adopt similar techniques, but in these locations which are often on main trunk roads and motorways, the car is king
This is especially true where consumers have no choice but to transport their purchases home themselves
Some of these businesses have successfully combined the techniques of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) markets with selling larger, traditionally higher value products. One of the best examples of this is IKEA.
The Psychology of Shopping
28 March 2006 By: Vlad Tarko, Senior Editor, Sci-Tech News
The Psychology of Shopping
How do you choose what to buy and why do you choose a certain store?
Researchers from MIT have shown that people are most susceptible to be influenced by
advertisers and promotions at the entrance of the store. According to the scientists, people
usually don't have their shopping goals very clearly pre-determined; they decide not only
what specific product to buy but also what kind of product they want to buy during their
wondering through the supermarket's aisles.
"Consumers start with fuzzy shopping goals, which become more concrete as the shopping
experience progresses," explain Leonard Lee and Dan Ariely. "Because of the initial lack of
concreteness of their goals, consumers' sensitivity to external cues is likely to be higher in
the earlier stage of their shopping when their goals are more malleable."
Lee and Ariely have conceived a series of tests showing that consumers can be influenced
to spend more or less than usual, depending on the conditional coupons presented to them
at the entrance. On the other hand, when the coupons were given inside the store they had
little effect.
"When the required spending level is higher than their typical spending level, they spend
more; when the required spending is lower, they spend less," write the authors. "This
experiment also demonstrates that customers' spending tends to shift with the minimum
spending conditions stated on their coupons."
In another related study, also to appear in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of
Consumer Research, researchers from the Northwestern University have documented the
so-called paradox of choice: customers generally want to have as many options as possible
but at the same time want to be able to decide what to buy as easily as possible.
Alexander Chernev explained how we generally get around this paradox by observing that
our shopping experience is "a decision process that comprises two different stages:
selecting an assortment and, subsequently, selecting a particular option from that
assortment."
Thus, the two conflicting goals, "maximal flexibility and minimal decision complexity", each
operate in a different stage of the shopping experience. The interesting conclusion of the
study is that large stores may get many customers inside (because the goal of maximal
flexibility functions in the first stage of the shopping experience), but then these customers
may not buy so many products as they otherwise would (in a smaller store) simply because
they cannot decide (the decision complexity is too large).
In other words, large stores attract many customers but there is a downfall: "increasing the
size of the assortment tends to complicate the decision process and decrease the overall
probability of purchase", writes Chernev. Thus, there exists an optimal size of the store,
optimal in the sense that customers are spending in there the largest amounts of money
buying the largest number of products.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Psychology-of-Shopping-20432.shtml
The Psychology of Shopping
How do you choose what to buy and why do you choose a certain store?
Researchers from MIT have shown that people are most susceptible to be influenced by
advertisers and promotions at the entrance of the store. According to the scientists, people
usually don't have their shopping goals very clearly pre-determined; they decide not only
what specific product to buy but also what kind of product they want to buy during their
wondering through the supermarket's aisles.
"Consumers start with fuzzy shopping goals, which become more concrete as the shopping
experience progresses," explain Leonard Lee and Dan Ariely. "Because of the initial lack of
concreteness of their goals, consumers' sensitivity to external cues is likely to be higher in
the earlier stage of their shopping when their goals are more malleable."
Lee and Ariely have conceived a series of tests showing that consumers can be influenced
to spend more or less than usual, depending on the conditional coupons presented to them
at the entrance. On the other hand, when the coupons were given inside the store they had
little effect.
"When the required spending level is higher than their typical spending level, they spend
more; when the required spending is lower, they spend less," write the authors. "This
experiment also demonstrates that customers' spending tends to shift with the minimum
spending conditions stated on their coupons."
In another related study, also to appear in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of
Consumer Research, researchers from the Northwestern University have documented the
so-called paradox of choice: customers generally want to have as many options as possible
but at the same time want to be able to decide what to buy as easily as possible.
Alexander Chernev explained how we generally get around this paradox by observing that
our shopping experience is "a decision process that comprises two different stages:
selecting an assortment and, subsequently, selecting a particular option from that
assortment."
Thus, the two conflicting goals, "maximal flexibility and minimal decision complexity", each
operate in a different stage of the shopping experience. The interesting conclusion of the
study is that large stores may get many customers inside (because the goal of maximal
flexibility functions in the first stage of the shopping experience), but then these customers
may not buy so many products as they otherwise would (in a smaller store) simply because
they cannot decide (the decision complexity is too large).
In other words, large stores attract many customers but there is a downfall: "increasing the
size of the assortment tends to complicate the decision process and decrease the overall
probability of purchase", writes Chernev. Thus, there exists an optimal size of the store,
optimal in the sense that customers are spending in there the largest amounts of money
buying the largest number of products.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Psychology-of-Shopping-20432.shtml
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
shopping is my life/ bbc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00c0cd1
ep 1
Top stylist Faye Sawyer and personal development coach Nick Jankel try to help shopping addicts curb their excesses. 36-year-old IT consultant Nikki Moore is addicted to high-end fashion, gadgets and pampering, but despite her glamorous lifestyle she wants more out of life. Faye and Nick confront her with a year's worth of her shopping excesses on the conveyor belt of shame. Can they transform aspiring writer Nikki into a less indulgent shopper and help her discover the life she really wants?
ep2
Stylist Faye Sawyer and personal development coach Nick Jankel confront shopping addicts about their excesses. 26-year-old Louise Hendry is hooked on shopping for high street fashion fixes, spending much of her 15,000 pound salary in the process and causing issues in her relationships. Faye and Nick show her a year's worth of her excesses on their conveyor belt of shame, but can they transform her into a more savvy shopper and help her fulfil her dream to become a top fashion photographer?
ep3
Stylist Faye Sawyer and personal development coach Nick Jankel try to help shopping addicts curb their excesses. 34-year-old IT consultant Andy Nicolaou can't stop shopping. In a year he's spent a phenomenal 100,000 pounds on extravagant gifts, flashy cars and designer clothes. On the surface he's got the lot, but all bachelor Andy really wants is true love. The team confront Andy with his entire year's worth of shopping excesses on their conveyor belt of shame. Can they transform him into a more selective shopper?
ep 1
Top stylist Faye Sawyer and personal development coach Nick Jankel try to help shopping addicts curb their excesses. 36-year-old IT consultant Nikki Moore is addicted to high-end fashion, gadgets and pampering, but despite her glamorous lifestyle she wants more out of life. Faye and Nick confront her with a year's worth of her shopping excesses on the conveyor belt of shame. Can they transform aspiring writer Nikki into a less indulgent shopper and help her discover the life she really wants?
ep2
Stylist Faye Sawyer and personal development coach Nick Jankel confront shopping addicts about their excesses. 26-year-old Louise Hendry is hooked on shopping for high street fashion fixes, spending much of her 15,000 pound salary in the process and causing issues in her relationships. Faye and Nick show her a year's worth of her excesses on their conveyor belt of shame, but can they transform her into a more savvy shopper and help her fulfil her dream to become a top fashion photographer?
ep3
Stylist Faye Sawyer and personal development coach Nick Jankel try to help shopping addicts curb their excesses. 34-year-old IT consultant Andy Nicolaou can't stop shopping. In a year he's spent a phenomenal 100,000 pounds on extravagant gifts, flashy cars and designer clothes. On the surface he's got the lot, but all bachelor Andy really wants is true love. The team confront Andy with his entire year's worth of shopping excesses on their conveyor belt of shame. Can they transform him into a more selective shopper?
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