Like all the previous years, Christmas and New Year are here once again; the time for giving and merry making. Many Zambian will obviously spend more than they can afford, while many more will pay for their shopping through credit. Christmas spending will inevitably lead to January debt woes. Many more Zambians are will face financial struggle in January and beyond after overspending at Christmas and New Year.

Almost one in three of us feel pressured to spend more than we can afford just before and over the festive period, while one in 10 people have fallen into debt, or further into existing debt, as a result of spending too much. The problems will be worsened by the fact that almost half of all workers were paid their salaries early in December; I got mine on 14th December. This means that more people will have a longer wait until their payday in January. The net result is that thousands will be feeling anxious, worried or even depressed throughout January. The reliance on debt to make ends meet will climb to a concerning level. Consumers will borrow more money in the run up to Christmas.

Realists see marketing as a form of manipulation, particularly around Christmas and the other retail bonanzas: Easter, Valentine’s Day, Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day. But rather than simply trying to trick people, the masters of marketing know that is iss much easier to understand and work with innate human flaws. By drawing on a plethora of psychological and sociological research, marketers subtly give us permission to buy and not to think too much, or too deeply, about why we are buying. Not thinking all the time is a very efficient way for us to get by. It conserves energy, and allows us to live relatively easily by responding to our psychological predispositions, social norms, and general cognitive imperfections. Here are some of our flaws marketers use to nudge us towards consumption.

The scarcity effect
Scarcity theory tells us that if we think that something is scarce or only available for a short time; our mind will give it more weight. Christmas and New Year are a hard deadline, so we are limited in our freedom to delay the purchase decision. Scarcity influences our ability to think clearly when making decisions, and accelerates our perceived perishability of an offer. We feel that if we do not participate in the Christmas ritual, we will miss out on a significant social experience. Similarly, many shops are offering Christmas-only bundles or gift sets, often at a ‘discount’ (which ‘doubles’ the scarcity effect). All of these tap into our willingness to respond to the scarcity effect and feel the need to buy things we would normally ignore.

Remember Christmas will not be your only opportunity to show others how much you love them, or to spend time with your family.
It seems obvious, but you can buy people gifts at any time of the year. All marketers are doing is tapping into your predisposition to value experiential scarcity during socially validated moments to encourage you to behave in particular ways.

Overwhelming stimuli
By surrounding us with stimuli designed to overwhelm our cognitive processing, we are less likely to think through our decisions in any complete way. When we walk into a shopping mall filled with Christmas tinsel, Christmas music, lights and sounds, we are going to experience some form of ego depletion. Ego depletion does not mean you instantly become a humble, thoughtful person. In psychology, we use this term to describe how people don’t always think through their decision-making in a rational and linear way when placed under situations of stress. Marketers do not want you to think; just to feel the Christmas magic. So, all that noise, colour and movement, is not just the shopping centre or strip getting into the festive season. It is also a technique to get you to think a little less completely, and respond to emotional cues, such as social norms, (fear of missing out), and rituals. I remember the frenzy that came with the Black Friday; people were buying even things that they do not need. My friend bought a washing machine claiming the price has been slashed by 30%, even when he does not have electricity at the farm but uses solar energy.

Of Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs are specifically vulnerable to impulse buying and their recovery can take months if not years. In a lot of instances, their businesses have gone on to fold. Your net profit is around 6-10% of sales. However, if you spend more than the net profit, then you are implicitly eating into your capital, putting at risk the very survival of your business. I know of an entrepreneur friend who told me that this year, he is taking his extended family out of town for Christmas. I just hope that he will not dip into his working capital.

How to resist the temptation
Despite our belief that we are all individuals, making independent decisions and choosing what we want and when we want it, humans are social, conforming and compliant creatures. If we see ‘our people’ are doing something, we tend to assume this is something we should also do. If we’re looking around and our environment is signalling this is what we do at Christmas time, then it’s easier to comply than to resist. It is hard to resist the festive pull. Christmas is a tough time to commit to reducing consumption, but it is possible. Resisting any natural response requires a commitment to the idea of resistance, a willingness to practise that resistance at all times (we know the more we do something, the easier it becomes) and, importantly, surrounding ourselves with people who will help us to resist, or at least won’t sabotage that resistance.

This does not mean cutting yourself off from society. But it does mean coming to terms with the idea you are open to manipulation, framing, priming and persuasion, and coming up with ways to avoid it. Focus on the idea of Christmas – time with family and friends, treating ourselves to novel food, eating all the great fruit that’s available this time of year – rather than succumbing to the commercial nudges that seem to have become imperative to Christmas. Give gifts if you wish, but think about what is moving you toward buying those gifts. With this knowledge, you might make a few better choices.
Most people enjoy spending money just for the sake of it and Xmas is the perfect excuse to go bonkers. In our family we agreed years ago not to buy each other a load of junk nobody needs or wants, we may splash out on a nice bottle of wine or some exotic cheese but that is it. Many of my friends and co-workers agree with me but have not gotten the guts to do it, and the question I get asked the most is well, when you get asked what you got for Christmas what do you say?
Our inability to forecast
Psychological research tells us humans aren’t very good at predicting the future. Or perhaps we just have an over-inflated sense of our accuracy in predicting the future – we rely on how we feel right now to predict how we might feel about something later. Psychologists call this affective forecasting. So, in the moment, and just in that moment, we buy things we think we will need.

But we discount all the other things that we have bought, and also discount how having all that stuff didn’t necessarily make things great last time. We all just want to have a good Christmas. If we think about Christmas lunch or dinner, few of us can plan how much food we will actually need and we aren’t very good at knowing how much we will end up eating (or need to eat). We pile our plate high, because we don’t really know how much we need, but do know how much we want. Lots and lots. Just in case we miss out on something great. It’s the same with gifts. We often don’t plan, and so we are more susceptible to the gentle nudges of the marketers when we are stressed, in a hurry, and trying to do ten things at once

The Author is an Entrepreneurship Trainer and a Lecturer at ZCAS University
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