The Most Wonderful Sale of the Year

So it's that time of year again; the time when everyone wants you to believe that they're giving you the deal of a lifetime. It's the time when prices are so low-low-low that you'd be a fool not to take out a second mortgage and go ball out at your nearest retailer. It's the time when (debatably) otherwise sane people will take a week off from work just to camp out in front of your friendly neighborhood big-box store just to get the largest, latest, and greatest electronics at prices so low they can't be advertised!

Yep, that's the narrative that starts getting heavily advertised right around the beginning of November and begins to wind down as the year does. I wonder, though, if we'd take a pause and analyze the situation, just how rational the whole thing is. Now, I understand that I live in the good ol' US of A where consumerism is the unofficial state religion. That being said, I guess it only makes sense that the word "sale" would evoke such a primal response in the large majority of the populous. The truth is that none of us is immune to the psychological effect that has in modern times began to be referred to as FOMO (fear of missing out). I'm sure we can all recall a time when we missed out on an event or opportunity that we later regretted. Even as I was researching for this article I ran upon a sale that I missed on Black Friday and let out an "Awww man!" Such is life, we can't be everywhere for everything.

One of the more recent developments is our ability to be aware of the multitude of missed opportunities. In times past, the only way you'd find out that you missed out on something was by word of mouth or television. Today, in our always on-always connected society, everyone wants to tell anyone who'll listen about the awesome thing that they just did/experienced. For evidence, one need only take a trip over to their favorite social media app of choice. Indeed, psychologists has linked the uptick in FOMO among the populous to the rise of social media.

From a financial perspective, it's understandable why people fear missing out. As I'm writing this I find myself reflecting on an episode of King of the Hill in which Hank Hill paid MSRP for every vehicle he purchased for 20 years (If you've never bought a car or are unfamiliar with why this is to terrible, check out this write-up from Edmunds). We can all recall a time when we paid too much for something, and since pretty much everything is purchased with currency, spending too much on one thing means we have less to spend on anything else. The logic makes sense, but the problem comes about when business tailor their marketing to take advantage of this mentality.

The sad truth is that there are no shortage of marketing agencies creating campaigns for their clients that are tailor-made to take advantage of the persistent FOMO that resides within the collective national subconscious. Many of the articles on the topic specifically promote the idea that millennials are especially vulnerable to FOMO marketing. What's interesting is how pervasive this marketing technique has become. One of the things that comes to mind is virtually all of the news media coverage on virtually any topic upon which opinions are divided. I'll cover FOMO politics in a later article, but suffice it to say that most politicians today have built their platform on a FOMO foundation.

So what does all this FOMO talk have to do with "The Most Wonderful Sale of the Year?" I would go out on a limb and say that the entire concept of Black Friday is built on everyone collectively fearing that they'll miss out on a huge discount when the truth is that the value you get by shopping during that particular weekend is negligible at best. According to this article from Business Insider, you may actually be getting a worse value than you'd get if you'd shopped during any other time of the year. In addition, the FOMO is causing many retailers to push Black Friday back even further, such that it's starting to eat into the Thanksgiving holiday time that employees should be free to spend with their families.

So am I saying that Black Friday is a terrible thing that need to go away? No. What I am advocating is just that we be aware that these factors exist and that there are those who would seek to use these market forces for their own purposes, be they honorable, nefarious, or something in between. Also, if you're a marketing professional, be aware that overuse of FOMO will inevitably cause it to be less effective. Even now there is a trend of more people unplugging as a result of FOMO fatigue. If you're not a marketing professional, I'd just say do you, and just be sure that what you're doing is for you and not for FOMO, because in my experience, fear is a terrible reason for doing anything.