Why Your Brain Loves Sales

Short Wave

NPR

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

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This Cyber Monday, a meditation on holiday sales. A quick trip to pick up presents can 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 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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	If you're the kind of person whose idea of a good party conversation starts with, I heard it on NPR, it might be time to take your superfandum seriously.
0:09.1	Deck yourself out in sale NPR swag from T-shirts to ball caps to the almighty NPR tote, all at 25% off through November 27th at shop.npr.org.
0:21.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:28.0	Hi, Gina.
0:29.2	Hey, how's it going?
0:30.5	This is my daughter, Dory.
0:32.1	You want to say hi?
0:33.2	Hi.
0:33.8	Alina. I'm so excited to go shopping with you.
0:36.2	It's going to be amazing.
0:37.1	So I guess we should tell people why we're weirdly a recording.
0:40.0	Yes. At a mall next to a Christmas tree. We are next to a giant Christmas tree. We're going to look for sales, right?
0:46.2	We're going to look for sales and we're going to talk about how sales make us feel. All right, let's do it. Where are we going to go shopping? Where didn't we go shopping?
0:54.5	Yeah, we walked around a lot. So Alina Selyuk, you're a business correspondent at NPR, and you apparently know a lot about malls.
1:02.7	If teenage Alina knew that you can get paid for knowing stuff about the malls, she'd be really impressed.
1:08.5	I cover retail, so I have to shop for science. Right, for science.
1:13.3	And you are kind enough to talk to us a little bit about the science involved in shopping, right? Specifically, the psychology of a sale, which is why we went hunting for sales at Pentagon City Mall just outside Washington.
1:24.4	Yes, and this is the peak holiday shopping season. There is one question
1:28.9	that I always get around this time. You can probably guess what it is. I think I can. Are
1:34.9	holiday discounts actually a good deal? That's exactly it. Bingo. And that is really subjective.
1:41.3	Honestly, sales can be good. They really can. And it really depends on your budget.
1:47.5	It depends on how badly you need whatever this item is. Or do you even need this item, right?
	...

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