Mini Episode 10 - Why aren’t we shopped out by Boxing Day?

Lauren from Prahran wants to know why people still shop after Christmas drops.

Dan: 00:18 Hey and welcome to Bad Decisions, mini episode 10. I'm your host, Dan Monheit from Hardhat and we are using these mini episode formats to tackle your weird and wonderful questions. Today's question comes from Lauren in Prahran and it could not have arrived at a better time. Lauren, what you got for us?

Lauren: 00:35 Hey, Dan. It's Lauren. Love the show by the way. So my question is, after Christmas and everything, why aren't we shopped out by Boxing Day?

Dan: 00:46 Lauren, Lauren, Lauren. This is a super insightful question. Right. This is on par with you know when you go out for a really big meal and you are completely stuffed and then they're like, "Would anybody like dessert?" And you're like, yes, please, I totally have room for dessert. It seems like that is what's happening here. I got to tell you that as an impartial observer, growing up as a Jewish kid and all, this whole thing around Christmas and Boxing Day has always seemed very, very strange to me. Because if you look at this from the outside, as I tended to, the lead up to it all looks insane. By the time December 25 rolls around, most people have already spent days or weeks or months plowing time and energy and effort into finding perfect gifts for those closest to them. I'm talking friends, family, teachers, colleagues, coaches.

Dan: 01:35 When I grew up, I even remember the garbos getting six packs of beer left out for them. And the thing is, just as the craziness cranks up to the final crescendo, we get this mad sprint to the finish with shopping centers open 24 hours, online retailers going crazy with super express delivery options and every service station in the country, loading up their front counters with whatever last minute gifts they can muster. If you ever want a USB powered fan or a really cool pair of reflective sunglasses, do not hold back, just hit your local servo. So this is all in the lead up and then just when I imagine everyone is about to fall into a giant retail fatigue induced heap, we miraculously see this second wind to end all second winds with millions of us rushing straight back out to the shops.

Audio effect: 02:21 Gear up for Boxing Day at-

Audio effect: 02:22 25% off store wide sale this Boxing Day.

Audio effect: 02:25 Savings this boxing day. Achieve long term hair removal results.

Audio effect: 02:28 60% off sale. Don't miss out.

Dan: 02:31 What the actual? Is what you might ask, is in fact what you did ask and it seems that to me, the actual has a lot to do with something called the licensing effect. A cognitive bias that refers to our core desire to maintain balance between our indulgent and our virtual selves. Essentially it's the... Because I did X, I really deserve Y mentality. So psychologically we work on this internalized bargaining system. As our mind tries to constantly evaluate and offset our positive acts against our negative ones and vice versa. To demonstrate let me just go to some research real quickly here. A study by [Wen Bin Chiou 00:03:05] in 2011, looked at the impact that a small virtuous act could have on people's subsequent choices. So what they did in this experiment is they brought a number of participants in, randomly split them into two groups, gave one a multivitamin each morning and a second group didn't get the multivitamin.

Dan: 03:22 The group that received the multivitamins ended up being way more susceptible to a wide variety of bad decisions, including smoking, drinking to excess, turning away from healthy activities like walking and yoga, simply because they felt that the multivitamin that they had in the morning was countering the effects of all of these bad things. Similar studies have found that energy efficient lights get left on more. People that buy more water efficient washing machines tend to use them more often and none of us need a research paper to know that if we do a really good gym workout in the morning, we are far more susceptible to smashing a cheeseburger with fries and dessert for lunch, because we deserve of it. Which brings us all the way back to December 26, after all that effort, shopping for everybody else in our lives the unofficial festival of licensing effect aka Boxing Day has become the 24 hour period where we turn our attention and generosity squarely inwards.

Dan: 04:15 It is the day for treating ourselves with all of the goodies that Santa didn't quite get around to bring us this year, and we will battle crazy car parks, packed escalators and credit card wear out just to make it happen. For brands, the big opportunity here is to look for instances where you can be the trade, knowing that this year, especially this year, people are coming off a long period of virtuousness and looking for any way that they can reward themselves for a really big, really tough year. If you are on the more virtuous side, the thing you can do is look for people who have just treated themselves, knowing that it is only a matter of time before they want to offset the treats and get themselves back up to equilibrium. So, Lauren, I hope that answers your question on why we are not shopped out by Boxing Day. I hope you have a great time buying wonderful gifts for all of your friends and family and then for yourself and I look forward to answering your next question in a couple of weeks from now. See you.