Theory
As I said, I mean to prove that shopping is an existential activity. Here are some things I’ve noticed:
First of all, pretty much everybody likes shopping. A few extremists hate it, and a few nutters ruin their lives by wracking up huge credit card debt to amass shoe collections to rival Immelda Marcos, but most of fall somewhere in the middle – amidst otherwise balanced and fulfilling lives, a new purchase provides a quick pick-me-up now and again.
In fact, I’d say most of the things we buy are for their emotional significance, rather than their utilitarian value. Most of us in the West can afford much more that what we need to survive on, and thus shopping is an act of self-definition and questing for something.
Next, it is very interesting to note the emotional pattern surrounding a purchase. We start out wanting to feel better, get a high when we by something, then gradually return to the lower state. In fact, this pattern mimics all sorts of other biological responses, thus proving that shopping is an ingrained, almost biological need.
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Lastly, shopping is one of the only activities that is both very widely practiced, and highly embued with symbolic meaning
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All that proves that this is a serious business, right? We are looking for something from shopping that we desperately want and don’t seem to be able to get as readily anywhere else.
So we keep on buying things. Though the fact that we have to keep on doing it is a little disturbing… That’s what this experiment is all about
Is one allowed comment? Delete me if I’m not.
Anyway, I was interested that you make little of the gender stereotype that women enjoy shopping much more than men. In particular, the view put forward by certain sociobiologists that shopping is an expression of a woman’s essential gene/mate-selecting instinct. Or maybe it was the other around. That arousal chart reminded me of something else.
Oh my – I love that charts and graphs can be utilized to justify my proclivities toward expenditure, love of newness, and defining self-fulfillment on credit! Someone should give you a PhD in this…
This is a very interesting site. BTW: Imelda Romualdez-Marcos has only one L in her first name.
When I was looking at your first chart I was wondering where I would fall in there. The first question that came to mind was “How do you define shopping?” I ask this because if someone were to suggest “going shopping” to me as a Saturday activity, I would cringe. I hate going out with no particular goal in mind, visiting shops and browsing. HOWEVER, if I see something somewhere while idly walking down the street, love it and buy it, I get that shopping high you speak of in a later chart. Same goes for buying something online. excitement, anticipation for the delivery, a second high when I receive it in the mail, etc. So, the ACT of purchasing something (”shopping”) is something I enjoy, but shopping as an activity that “girls do” is something I do not enjoy.
Hi Johanna!
I think “shopping” is the act of purchasing and acquiring, no matter how you do it, because what I’m interested in is the fantasy that goes along with each acquisition, and who we think we’ll be with that thing. I used to looove the activity of shopping too, but now agree that it can be pretty heinous. Good thing we work in SOHO, where it is just a by-product of coming to work everyday… or bad thing, I dunno