Psychology Behind Black Friday Spending: Past Shopping Decisions Influence Choices

The Black Friday sale witnesses people with long lists of things they need but cannot buy at full prices thronging stores to get that magic deal they can brag about for months.

The day was named so because it is the time of the year that shopkeepers when retailers turn a profit for the year by putting their accounts in the "black."

A research conducted on decision making by individuals while buying products, showed that these retailers tend to play on two factors that influence customer choices — pride and regret.

A research paper on decision making published on the American Psychological Association has shown that fear of future regret influences decision making while making purchases. The feeling of having messed up usually stems after we analyze a choice we made in the past. But, the regret response can be predicted by us to make better decisions, and this drives us to change them after we sense that this could be a regretful choice.

According to a report on the Conversation, regret is a complicated emotion that can manifest itself both in the form of "acts of commission", regret when we do something; as well as "acts of omission", regret when we don't.

People tend to be either pleased or saddened by an outcome. When we find that a choice could result in us feeling regret, we tend to not do them. Because of this, regret that builds up over a period of time is often linked to things not done rather than actions taken.

But whether a person acts on this feeling is based on several factors. Regret influences choice because actions that make us happy tend to get repeated. So, past experiences may dictate how we respond to the regret response.

The answer may well lie in the consumer's emotional memory. What decision did they take the last time and how did it make them feel? Actions that resulted in emotional pleasure are likely to be repeated and reinforced.

Even retailers tend to use these feelings that a purchase invokes in people by keeping a close eye on inventory. They tend to stock up on products that sold-out faster and seemed to make customers happy.

The same method is adopted during Black Friday sales too where retailers use a careful analysis of the past to choose what products to display and how much offer to give. The fluctuations in prices also offer clues to how happy or sad a product makes a person. Retailers find that often the price of an item that went up after a sale was more likely to be successful at making the consumer happy and vice versa.

Regret is tied to pride in a convoluted way. The research noticed that a loss induces regret while a gain induces pride. This phenomenon known as the disposition effect has people constantly honing-in toward products that invoked pride in the past.

Another research shows that the pride we feel when we make a successful deal is often over powered by regret we associate with bad purchases. For a consumer who bags a bargain in the sale only to find the item was further discounted at a later date, the initial feeling of pride may be tempered by the regret at having bought it too soon and not receiving an even bigger discount, the report said.

In this case, the mixture of pride and regret caused the customer to avoid sales altogether, the research said.

Much like a gambler who loses a ton of money after initial success, when the feeling of pride is robbed and replaced by regret, it invokes a very strong response against gambling in the future.

While this makes consumers wise and helps them analyze marketing ploys better, the fear of missing out on a potential $100 dollar saving on something you’ve always wanted drives you to stores out of sheer anxiety. We just can’t forgo a good bargain.

When going for a Black Friday deal, always remember that the decision you make could influence future buys. These responses could be honed to make better deals and wiser choices when you are standing at an aisle staring at the price tag for 33 minutes as people scramble around you.