Is Guilt Hurting Retail Sales?
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Fighting Back Against Shoppers Guilt,” guilt is a significant hurdle to our economic recovery.
“Guilt has always been part of the shopping experience.” Christina Passariello of the WSJ writes. “But retail executives say it has become such an overriding emotion among shoppers since the economic crisis set in last year that it is delaying the recovery of the luxury-goods industry. Shoppers are suffering from “luxury shame,” consulting group Bain & Co. said in a research report earlier this week.”
The most recent retail sales figures seem to support this notion. Aeropostale, Target, and other “budget” retailers are doing relatively well in same-store sales from this time last year (Aeropostale is up an amazing 20+%), while luxury retailers such as Saks are down nearly 20%. Researchers have identified the “guilt” a shopper feels when swiping his or her credit card as something akin to the guilt a smoker feels after finishing a cigarette. That sounds counter-intuitive, unless shopping is somehow tethered to our fear of causing oneself or others harm through personal indulgence. But if shopping doesn’t hurt anyone, why do we feel guilty?
It all makes sense if you consider shopping (or buying) an addiction, even a cultural one; or if, in a Puritan sense, you consider purchasing items you don’t “need” inappropriate. Both addiction and Puritanism are firmly encamped on the the amber plains of the American psyche, so maybe it’s not that crazy to think that by refraining from buying luxury items in times of strife you are actually helping out those less fortunate.
It makes sense, as well, that shopper’s guilt ebbs when purchasing items that seem necessary. Big-ticket electronics, such as iPhones and flat-screen TVs—luxury items by any measure—, do not suffer the same stigma as Tod’s bags because one can convince oneself, and therefore others, that they are tools (Tod might disagree with this assessment). Computers, phones, and cameras need to be upgraded. TVs get outdated. Purchases made purely for reasons of adornment or fashion, however, don’t enjoy the same utilitarian standing. They, almost by definition, are indulgences. The clear lesson for luxury lifestyle brands and retailers, it seems, is to either give consumers some political cover (pop-up or mobile retail), help them assuage their guilt through donation with purchase programs, or market products as “necessary.”
Or perhaps the best way to deal with guilt is to “hide” the luxury shopping experience online. Does “luxury shame”—epitomized by the showy act of walking out of a fancy store with big shopping bags—also exist in e-commerce? Online shopping involves different consumer behavior, for sure, and has seen an estimated 20% jump this year. Instead of planning a chunk of time around going to the store, one can take five minutes to get the things one needs online. While this may be true, it’s certainly not as enjoyable as walking out of Burberry’s with a gaggle of bags. If no one is around to share in the experience of buying that hard-to-find or got-to-have-it item, the shopper can feel less shame, sure, but where’s the fun?
As Passariello points out, shopping has always been a guilty pleasure. And guilt is part of that pleasure. “Luxury shame” is the shadow side of the shopper’s rush to which many of us are addicted, and the one doesn’t come without the other. This is the main reason why luxury retail will never shift entirely from physical to online spaces, even as some budget retailers thrive entirely online. People who consumer conspicuously like to be seen doing so. On the pleasure/guilt spectrum it is more fashionable right now to feel guilt, but like all fads, what once was in style soon will be again. — Garth Weber