Why it's so hard to resist holiday sales (and how to try)

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Malls are designed to overwhelm our brains. Add the stress of holiday shopping, and a quick trip to pick up presents could turn into an hours-long shopping spree thanks to all the ways stores use research from fields like consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing to entice you. Retailers create urgency and scarcity to push you to give into the emotional part of your brain, motivated by the release of dopamine.

But we've got your back! With the help of NPR business correspondent Alina Selyukh, we get into the psychology of sales and discounts: Why it's SO hard to resist the tricks stores use — and some tips to outsmart them.

Read Alina's full story here.

Questions about the science driving the world around you? Email us at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hi Gina.
0:08.0	Hey, how's it going?
0:10.0	This is my daughter, Dory.
0:11.0	You want to say hi?
0:12.0	Hi.
0:13.0	Alina, I'm so excited to go shopping with you.
0:15.0	It's going to be amazing.
0:16.0	So I guess we should tell people why we're weirdly a recording.
0:19.0	Yes.
0:20.0	At a mall next to a Christmas tree.
0:22.0	We are not to a giant Christmas tree.
0:24.3	We're going to look for sales, right?
0:25.6	We're going to look for sales, and we're going to talk about how sales
0:28.4	make us feel.
0:29.4	All right, let's do it.
0:30.2	What are we going to do shopping?
0:32.0	Where didn't we go shopping? Yeah, we walked around a lot. So, Alina Seluk, you're a business
0:38.6	correspondent at NPR and you apparently know a lot about malls. If teenage Elena knew that you can get paid for knowing stuff about the malls,
0:46.8	she would be really impressed.
0:47.8	I cover retail, so I have to shop for science.
0:50.9	Right, for science. And you are kind enough to talk to us a little bit about the science involved in shopping, right?
	...

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