Addicted to Black Friday shopping: How the discount battle is affecting those affected

“70 percent off headphones”, “2 perfumes for the price of one”, “Today only – lowest price guarantee”: this is how potential consumers are lured to stores and online stores on Black Friday, during Cyber ​​Week and throughout December. What is an exception for some is commonplace for others – shopping without size simply because the price is right and your personal well-being is not.

In Switzerland, 4.8 percent of the population suffers from shopping addiction – this was the result of a representative study by the Swiss Institute for Addiction and Health Research in 2019. However, due to a lack of research, compulsive shopping is still not classified as a behavioral addiction in terms of himself. Only a small proportion of shopaholics and people with problematic shopping behavior seek professional help.

This may also be related to the fact that they do not consider themselves shopping addicts. The example of Lea shows this: she is 25 years old and works as a clerk. When asked if she was addicted to shopping, she replies: “I would say no myself. But people around me keep saying that I am addicted to shopping. But I don’t mind that I need therapy because of it.”

And it took Merlijn, who is a tiler by trade, about half a year to realize that he was suffering from compulsive shopping. A move made him realize how many things he actually owns, as he says. “What am I supposed to do with all this stuff, do I really need it?” he wondered and began to wrestle with the subject. Of the 40,000 francs in his account, there were suddenly only 15,000 left – then it clicked.

Sina, on the other hand, openly admits that she suffers from a shopping addiction. Every month, the beauty assistant empties her bill for things she – as she later realizes – actually doesn’t need at all. She spends most of her money on furniture and decorations, which she usually buys from shops. But the 20-year-old also buys other things, such as electrical appliances. After paying all her bills, she checks how much pay is left. “Recently I thought I should buy myself a bed – even though I have one that fits perfectly. If I still have 500 francs in my account, I can’t help but spend it.”

Regularity is an important indicator of addiction in general. However, this refers not only to the frequency with which you actually buy something, but also to how often you think about shopping. For example, Lea sees something every day that she would like to buy – in about 7 out of 10 cases she also buys the object of desire after comparing prices online.

Price comparisons also played a big role in Merlin’s shopping addiction: “You are confronted with prices everywhere and nowadays it is very easy if you want to compare prices. We people are like this: if it is 10 francs cheaper somewhere, I must have it now.”

During his shopping addiction, the record publisher mainly bought designer clothes. When asked what his three most unnecessary purchases were, he laughs and admits there have been many more. “A T-shirt certainly doesn’t have to cost more than 50 francs – looking back I wonder why if you spent eight times as much on it. You pay a multiple, but then you see on the label that it was produced in the same place as the shirt for 50 francs.”

He says he always needed the latest and greatest and describes his behavior as obsessive. Although he had a working PS4 at home, he ordered the even newer PS5 – and felt guilty afterwards.

As is well known, the high is followed by a low – that also applies to those interviewed. All of them feel euphoric soon after the purchase to try out or try on the new gadgets or clothes, or to put up the new decoration. Disillusionment follows a few days, or weeks at the latest. This is followed by the realization that you bought something when you don’t need it.

Sina, who spends between 500 and 900 francs a month on unnecessary things, says: “After a few weeks of looking at my account, I regret it because the money is missing elsewhere. This is dangerous.” Often she never sets up her newly acquired decoration at home, but leaves it in its original packaging. Lea also continues to give away clothes to friends that still have a tag on them. As her shopping expenses are getting higher and higher, she sits at home on weekends while all her friends go out. Lea gets a bad conscience when the money runs out shortly before her next paycheck.

The afflicted portrayed all say that on a bad day they are much more likely to shop unnecessarily. For example, Sina says she mainly goes shopping when she is irritated or has low self-esteem. She then justifies her spending as follows: “I always talk myself into it by saying, I’d rather spend my money on X or Y than, say, buy cigarettes or spend the money when I go out.”

The “You’re not treating yourself to anything else” mentality appears to be a major driver for shopping among those surveyed. Lea also legitimizes her purchases in the interview with the statement that you can treat yourself to something now and then with the money you work for every day. For her, buying new clothes means a boost of self-confidence: if she doesn’t feel confident, she buys new things to feel more beautiful.

Merlin also uses the term “treat” over and over when talking about his uncontrolled shopping trips. Especially if he was demotivated at work. “I just thought: I work all day on the construction site, so I can treat myself to something – after all, I work for something. At some point, this kind of indulgence degenerated – when things weren’t going so well at work, the inner pressure to buy something is increasing.”

Black Friday is a big challenge for all three – everything is full of discounts and special offers that make it hard for those involved not to spend money on things they don’t need.

Lea has decided not to buy anything on Black Friday so she has enough money for Christmas shopping. And Sina is glad she has to work until 8 p.m. By then most shops would be closed anyway and she would be less tempted to pull her card. “But the offers are very tempting, I must admit.”

Merlin spent 2,500 francs on Black Friday last year – in one day. He bought a bag, a jacket and a PS5. This year, he’s doing a much better job of ignoring discounts—largely thanks to his dad’s help.

Merlin was afraid to talk about his problem with his friends for a long time. “I was afraid of how my friends would react – they work for two or three months for such amounts.” Noticing how much his increasingly frequent shopping trips affected him psychologically, he turned to his father, with whom he is very close. It took him a lot of effort to reveal the cards, but it was still the only right thing to do.

“Many young people fail to take this step and slide further and further down the road. I gave him bank statements for the past 12 months and he took the time to go through them all. He painted all unnecessary expenses for me with fluorescent paint. Then I checked: if I had only had my wages, without my savings, this would never have worked out. » His father also calculated that Merlin could easily have spent a year traveling the US with this money – just as he had dreamed since he finished his apprenticeship. “It hurt,” he says today.

His father now manages the rest of his savings – Merlin has only a few thousand francs left if he urgently needs to resort to a larger sum.

The three narrators never built up any real debts – only Lea reports how she was sometimes reminded of it for paying bills late – but a debt execution never materialized. They would only have sought professional help if they had become so financially distressed that they could no longer cover their fixed costs—rent, food, transportation, and so on. Respondents use this financial imbalance to portray a shopaholic’s syndrome – as long as they can still pay all the bills, the problem is not big enough to seek help.

Merlin has since been able to resell many of his clothes and recoup some of his expenses. “It felt good to get rid of things and get the money back. I’ve now been able to sell everything I don’t use.”

He has fundamentally changed his buying habits since talking to his father. Nowadays he sometimes hardly dares to make a purchase, he says. “Maybe I buy two new shirts every three months because two old ones broke. In fact, you should only buy things if something is missing.”

*all names have been changed by the editors.