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While perusing bins on the John Lewis website, having heard great things about the Brabantia 60-litre, I noticed my stress levels rise – and it wasn’t just because the lid-up height meant the bin wouldn’t fit in my new cabinet. It was because for my whole shopping session there had been a dribble of information about how many other customers had put the items I was looking at in their basket in the last 24 hours, how many had bought them and how fast the stock supply was dwindling. Over on the M&S website, a mattress topper flashed a banner: ‘In demand! Sold 43 times in the last 48 hours’. My heart rate climbed and I felt my wellbeing plummet as a generalised, half-conscious sense of missing out for being too slow – a lifelong fear – crept over me.
They exploit our basest psychological triggers to make us buy fast and in distress
I am fairly sure that browsing bins and mattress toppers online should be the sort of activity that puts you to sleep, not that causes your blood pressure to rise. Instead it has become a fiercely competitive consumer experience, similar to finding cheap flights to Sicily or Greece in peak season.
But why? After all, the deal was clear when EasyJet pioneered the tactic of showing how many other people are looking at a certain flight, how many minutes have passed since someone bought the thing you might want, and how many of those things (seats) are left at a certain price. We were kissing goodbye to pleasantness of experience, running a gamut of psychological and technological stress and confusion and in return we were going to Amsterdam or Dubrovnik for £20.
In the case of posh bins, bedside tables and mattress toppers, which one might have assumed face different stock constraints to limited seats on seasonally-run flights, the decision is more confusing.
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