Now that the holiday has started, depending on where you are in the worlds, you have probably seen people flock to Christmas markets to tune into the festive season. We’ve all probably been there; getting excited and buying lots of things to get into the Holiday spirit! But sometimes we feel as though we bought too much and may end up regretting it later. This article will examine how mindfulness could be helpful to help us manage our consumerist behaviors.

This article will cover:

• Marketing strategies
• Consumerism vs Mindfulness
• Mindfulness in consumer behaviour
• Mindfulness as an antidote to consumerism
• Mindfulness strategies for everyday life
• Sustainability and Mindfulness
• Give the Christmas Present of Mindfulness

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Mindfulness is “a practice which sets out to enrich our attention and awareness in everyday life”[5]. Consumerism on the other hand can be defined as the effects of equating personal satisfaction with material goods[11]. Since mindfulness is about mental states and consumerism about material goods, the two terms seem to not have a relation at all. Can we really utilize mindfulness as a means to manage our consumerist behaviors and decrease the negative impact of consumerist behaviors? Yes!

Marketing Strategies

During COVID times, many prefer to stay at home, which can increase online instead of offline shopping.  Online shopping allows customers to purchase products anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, it helps consumers reduce the time and efforts used for shopping and save money while purchasing products online [A-Debei, Akroush, & Ashouri, 2015]. At the same time, product-specific attributes encourage consumer browsing behavior, which may lead to impulse buying especially if the person already has a tendency to shop impulsively for personal satisfaction [11]. Therefore, it may be useful to notice the ways in which both online and offline brands are marketed, to avoid “mindless” buying. Through this, you understand that the presented information is not purely objective but is merely a way to manipulate you into buying things, even if you object to it at first.

Three important strategies are briefly explained below:

1. Influencing emotions: Brands often influence your emotions to make you more susceptible to consider their products. For example, a perfume commercial would want to provoke ideas of beauty, power, or sensuality. In addition, the presence of a beautiful model would make many want to be associated with the model. Therefore, the commercial would induce feelings of pleasure and make people more likely to consider buying the product. The design of an online shopping site is also meant to influence your mood.
2. Brand imagery: Brands often capitalize on its imagery and see it as a tool to make you more susceptible to buying their products. For example, a brand can use memes to target the attention of the younger audience. These brands would then be talked about often and/or go viral on social media, and more people would consider buying them. Another example is hiring celebrities to market brands. With good marketing, the fans of these celebrities would be more likely to consider these brands since the brands are now associated with their idol.
3. Audience’s memories: A brand might try to ensure that you are more likely to remember them and therefore buy their products by influencing the audience's emotions. For example, a brand might induce feelings of nostalgia by tying the product to some events, thoughts, or even cartoons from your childhood. This may influence brand loyalty [12].

Consumerism vs Mindfulness

It is extremely surprising how powerful material goods are as a factor in the equation of how we construct our identity and maintain it and how we assign meaning to ourselves and to others [1]. Material goods share a symbolic value and power that is related to a universal tendency that humans have to categorize material possessions as an extended part of themselves. The concept of self then extended to something non-human that included our immediate belongings. It is well shared among us, you know that, when one is separated from their possessions, they feel emotional loss. Our possessions say something about us and thus consumerism is closely linked to our identity and self.

Mindfulness  has many definitions, and as a meditative practice stems from eastern cultures where neither individualism nor consumerism is as enhanced as it is in the West [1]. Mindfulness offers the smart solution, by helping us to explore our sense of self but without involving any process of material acquisition. Instead it proposes increased connectedness with ourselves and interconnectedness with others and the wider world. This is important because there is a difference between living in the present (encouraged by mindfulness) and living for the present (supports consumption without thinking about the later consequences).

Mindfulness then has the potential to eliminate the damaging impacts of selfish materialism [1]. Social culture embraces the idea that rewards, pleasure and achievement and social acceptability are all the time surrounded by a frame of materialistic success. Mindfulness instead, re-prioritizes our repressed goals and motivations, placing consumption in the second place. There is further evidence that mindfulness is linked to a greater degree of environmentally responsible consumption at least by reconnecting us with personal meaning and individual purpose.

Finally [1], mindfulness contributes to a broader movement of conscious living, where people, we, can choose to create meaning or reappraise situations and most importantly where our sense of value does not stem anymore from our urge to buy, shop or own material things, but to come from deeper relationships, satisfaction with ourselves, work and people around us but also by making a meaningful contribution to society as a whole.

Mindful Consumption

Research suggests that compulsive buying might be related to mindfulness. Specifically, lack of mindful attention might be related to the inability to control impulses while shopping [14]. Mindful consumption refers to the practice of paying attention to and acceptance of external and internal stimuli during the consumption process. If we want to fully benefit from mindfulness techniques to improve our consumer behaviour, we must be able to direct and sustain awareness while shopping [2]. Bahl and colleagues argue that increased awareness while shopping helps increase insight into our consumer behaviours which in turn weakens these habitual behaviours. Ultimately, this may lead us to abandon behaviours that produce short-term gratification (e.g., impulsively buying a new T-shirt) at the expense of long-term wellbeing (e.g., feeling guilty for spending money for something we did not actually need).

Which aspects of consumption can we be mindful about and how? Milne and colleagues [8] identified three different consumer perspectives on the role of mindfulness in consumer behaviour. Understanding this relationship is not only helpful on the individual level – improving our own consumer behaviours, but also for companies that want to practice mindful marketing and promote mindful consumption and sustainability.

Consumer first view

The consumer first view refers to the idea that mindful consumption means paying attention to the price and quality of the products. In this view, a mindful consumer is careful about overspending and is able to make a smart choice by comparing the available products on the market. This type of consumer is strategic, aware of their financial possibilities and plans shopping in advance accordingly.

Firm first view

The firm first view refers to the idea that consumers pay attention to the company’s practices and impact on the environment. They research the firm’s ethical practices and then make consumer choices accordingly. This involves knowing where the products come from, how they are produced, how the employees are treated, and what impact the product has on the individual as well as the environment.

Informed consumer view

Lastly, the informed consumer view means paying careful attention to all aspects of the product, from production to disposal. Moreover, they can distinguish between what they want and what they actually need. They also consider the consequences of their purchase.

Mindfulness as an Antidote to Consumerism

Erika Rosenberg explains that “cultivating mindfulness can serve as an antidote to consumerism” [13]. Her argument is based on two points, firstly: that advertisements and businesses use peoples’ psychological processes to make consumer behaviour as automatic as possible. Here mindfulness can help in becoming more aware of these automatic cognitive and behavioural processes that lead us to consume automatically. In other words, mindfulness can help you to become more aware of your choices and thus become a more mindful consumer.

The second point she makes is about the need for fulfillment. She explains that the human drive that dictates needs to be fulfilled forces these nonconscious consumption choices. Here practicing mindfulness might increase the feeling of fulfillment, without needing to resort to consuming [13]. Rosenberg explains that “on the most essential level, mindfulness is awareness and the ability to see the happenings of one's inner and outer worlds” [13]. She further explains that mindfulness can be seen as becoming aware of the mind’s biases as well as learning to become non-judgemental towards what happens in one’s mind, body and the outside world. She argues that practicing mindfulness makes one see the ways in which they are constantly being subtly (and not so subtly) manipulated to take part in excessive consumeristic behaviours [13].

She makes a strong point by explaining that people who are mindful are more aware of their behaviour and thus are able to make more deliberate choices, also when it comes to consumption behaviour. In other words, if you are mindful then you are able to act (mindfully) instead of reacting impulsively or reflexively [Rosenberg,].

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Mindfulness strategies for everyday life

Now that you have a glimpse of marketing strategies and the way businesses use crowd psychology to increase consumerism, it is time to look at concrete mindfulness strategies that will help you become aware of your consumer behavior and even go further into understanding the root of this problem. The act of shopping excessively is not always from a need, but because it is emotionally fulfilling. It can come as a self-licensing act which dictates that people would allow themselves to do something less moral or less desirable after they performed an act that they considered ethical and good. The self licensing comes as a reward for their prior good behavior, and it can be manifested as well in unhealthy shopping behavior. [6]

Before getting into the concrete strategies it is important to realize that people may not always act based on their rational side but based on automatisms. As Kahneman called them system 1 and system 2 of thinking.[7] System 1 is effortless automatic and entails no need for voluntary control whereas system 2 requires attention and effortful mental activity. When people use system 2 too much they end up having ego depletion which impedes people to further use system 2. Therefore at the end of the day when people experience ego depletion they have the tendency to use only their automatisms and not their rational side.[3] Automatisms can also contribute to endless scrolling on the shopping websites and mindless shopping.

Therefore mindfulness can constitute the key of directing people towards realizing their biases, tendencies, emotions and help them rationalize their behavior.

One simple strategy that would help you become more mindful is keeping a diary and writing down what you wish to acquire. Writing down emotions, ideas and desires followed by reading them outloud will give you perspective over them. This has the potential to make you see the things you wrote as a third party and judge them accordingly. It could also help you realize if these goods are worth it, by creating a  balance between costs and benefits of buying them.

Another mindfulness strategy is simply start practicing meditation as this activity would make one more aware of their thoughts and behavior. Becoming more aware of wrong patterns and biases could help prevent giving into the mindless acquisition of consumer goods.

Journaling and constantly asking questions related to our identity (Do I identify with the things that I own?), what values drive our consumption choices (Are my values reflected in my consumer behavior?), what these objects symbolize for us  and how we use them to portray who we are would increase our awareness of the “urgency” of buying them. Moreover, asking questions about the cultural background and the tradition we grew up with would direct us to become aware if this is something that we desire or are just perpetuating a pattern of behavior?[1,10]

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Sustainability and Mindfulness: Becoming the better version of yourself while saving the planet

You look at your phone and see tons of advertisements catered to what the algorithm thinks you need. You look to your right and see advertisements about Christmas approaching. Then, you look to your left and see tips on how to shop for your family and friends. All of this may or may not be similar to you. But as the years pass by, we spend more on things that we actually do not really need. The chance to change it is in our hands. How do you do this? Let’s dive into the topic of pro-environmental behavior.

If you act sustainably, then the brands will have to adapt to your needs as a consumer. This is becoming more popular as people are making mindful decisions rather than buying every single thing that is advertised by influencers. Some examples of sustainable consumption include only buying fair trade goods, using energy efficient devices, going for organic options, recycling your waste, going for a minimalistic lifestyle and traveling environmentally friendly[4]. Thus, consuming less is not the main idea, it is about changing the way you consume. Making these small lifestyle changes will be a big move for an environmentally friendly world. There are two keywords that influence your consumer behavior: socially conscious behavior and green purchase intention[4]. Socially conscious behavior points to actions that are intended to have a positive influence on organizations and other people such as labor rights. Green purchase intention, also known as GPI, is about the intentions behind your desire to buy green products and how much you are affected by these desires[4].  

A study found that materialism is linked to lower life satisfaction, whereas social conscious purchasing, and green purchase intentions are related to increased life satisfaction[4]. Another study failed to find direct effects for mindfulness interventions linked to consumption behavior[5]. However, they found that mindfulness led to enhanced well-being which could affect consumption behaviors in the future. The reason why the authors did not find what they were looking for could also be related to the measuring methodology[5]. All in all, being more mindful of your consumption choices will help the environment for sure. The research in this area still has a long way to go.

Give the Present of Mindfulness

At Christmas time, we can especially feel overwhelmed with the need to consume. Christmas is nowadays often viewed as the time of gift giving and abundance. You might be thinking about what to give as a gift to your loved ones this Christmas. If you are anything like me, you might also be doing Christmas gift shopping very, I mean very, last minute. I think we can all recall the last minute hectic buzz in big shopping malls and Christmas markets, with the overwhelmingly loud Jingle Bells blasting from the speakers and sweaty, stressed people bumping into one another in the gift section in order to secure the best last minute gifts. This is such a fruitful time to end up acting impulsively and buying things that the receivers don't even need, just to get them something quickly in order to get the heck out of the noisy shopping mall.

Therefore, I want to present you with an alternative. Instead of mindlessly buying and gifting yet another box of chocolate, fluffy socks, tea assortment or the newest iPhone, what if this year you gave a gift of mindfulness? There are several apps that focus on cultivating mindfulness through meditation and other means. These apps include, but are not limited to: Headspace, Calm, Insight Timer, Ten Percent Happier, Buddhify, Unplug meditation and simple habit (read reviews here). For example, Calm offers the ability to buy a membership for someone else as a gift. The gift of mindfulness is not only a beautiful way to support the mental health and mindfulness of the people you care about but it is also a mindful gift in terms of our planet, as it does not burden the planet with its materiality. What could be a more mindful gift than mindfulness itself!

With this article, we wish you a very joyful holiday! And don’t forget to be mindful ;)

References:

1. Armstrong, A., & Jackson, T. (2015). The mindful consumer. Mindfulness training and the escape from consumerism. Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group, Friends of the Earth Big ideas Project. 7-19

2. Bahl, S., Milne, G. R., Ross, S. M., Mick, D. G., Grier, S. A., Chugani, S. K., ... & Boesen-Mariani, S. (2016). Mindfulness: Its transformative potential for consumer, societal, and environmental well-being. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 35(2), 198-210.

3. Daley, K., & Howell, R. (2018). Draining the will to make the sale: The impermissibility of marketing by ego-depletion. Neuroethics, 11(1), 1-10.

4. Dhandra, T. K. (2019). Achieving triple dividend through mindfulness: More sustainable consumption, less unsustainable consumption and more life satisfaction. Ecological economics, 161, 83-90.

5. Geiger, S. M., Fischer, D., Schrader, U., & Grossman, P. (2020). Meditating for the planet: effects of a mindfulness-based intervention on sustainable consumption behaviors. Environment and Behavior, 52(9), 1012-1042.

6. Gijsbrechts, E., Campo, K., & Vroegrijk, M. (2018). Save or (over-) spend? The impact of hard-discounter shopping on consumers' grocery outlay. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 35(2), 270-288.

7. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.

8. Milne, G. R., Villarroel Ordenes, F., & Kaplan, B. (2020). Mindful consumption: Three consumer segment views. Australasian marketing journal, 28(1), 3-10.

9. M. M. Al-Debei, M. N. Akroush, and M. I. Ashouri, "Consumer attitudes towards online shopping: the effects of trust, perceived benefits, and perceived web quality," Internet Research, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 707-733, 2015.

10. Nasr Bechwati, N., Mounkkaddem Baalbaki, A., Nasr, N. I., & Baalbaki, I. B. (2016). Mindful consumer behavior: a cross-cultural comparison. Journal of International & Interdisciplinary Business Research, 3(1), 100-113.

11. Park, E. J., Kim, E. Y., Funches, V. M., & Foxx, W. (2012). Apparel product attributes, web browsing, and e-impulse buying on shopping websites. Journal of Business Research, 65(11), 1583–1589. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.02.043

12. Peek, S. (2021, 2 december). The Science of Persuasion: How to Influence Consumer Choice. Business News Daily. Geraadpleegd op 20 december 2021, van https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10151-how-to-influence-consumer-decisions.html

13. Rosenberg, E. L. (2004). Mindfulness and consumerism.

14. Williams, A. D., & Grisham, J. R. (2012). Impulsivity, emotion regulation, and mindful attentional focus in compulsive buying. Cognitive therapy and research, 36(5), 451-457.