Meet Todd Stuart, dedicated shopper.
Undeterred by low temperatures, ice or snow, Stuart, who is 52 and lives in Northville, Mich., has spent the winter hunting for deals in the clearance aisles of metro Detroit’s J.C. Penney stores.
After an appointment in Detroit, “I drove to Lakeside,” he says. “It was that Saturday we had that big snowstorm. It was coming down thick. The roads were all covered. From there, I’ve got to find out what’s at Fairlane. So in a snowstorm where nobody should be driving, I went to two of these stores just because I’ve never been to them.
“The only way to get these deals is to go back to the store kind of again and again to check and see what’s been marked down,” says Stuart, who is benefiting from J.C. Penney’s most recent decision to switch up its merchandise mix. In many cases, the store has discounted high-end housewares lines by more than 90 percent off original prices.
His haul so far: bone china dinner plates for $1.58 each, regularly $28; a wooden Design by Conran storage cabinet for $350-ish, down from $2,165; and picture frames, notebooks, desk accessories and more.
Add to that, something that can’t be put in a shopping bag: excitement.
“There is a real rush with going out and hunting for these things and finding these great deals,” says Stuart, who is thrifty and selective about what he buys. “When you get things like that, it’s ‘Wow!’ It’s a game.”
More than wants or needs or convenience, it’s the thrill of the hunt that lures many shoppers into the stores - whether it’s at J.C. Penney or Target or Macy’s or stores such as T.J. Maxx and Marshalls that bill themselves as treasure hunts or, well, even the neighborhood garage sale.
And - in the post-recession era where shoppers have become increasingly savvy and more conscious of how much they spend - it’s what keeps them coming back, not necessarily for stuff they actually need, but for what might best be described as shopping trophies.
“I call it competitive sport shopping,” says Kit Yarrow, a California-based consumer psychologist whose latest book, Decoding the New Consumer Mind: How and Why We Shop and Buy (Wiley, $27), is due out March 31.
“It really is like playing the sport where you’re competing against someone and you want to win,” she says. “If you beat them, then you’re better than they are. In a lot of ways, that’s what shopping is all about. The badge of honor today isn’t, ‘Look how rare and expensive this thing is that I bought.’ … It’s really winning the price war against the competition.”
Winning changes our body chemistry.
“The same neurotransmitters that are involved in drug addiction of any sort are also involved when we’re shopping,” Yarrow says. “We get a little squirt of dopamine when we have a positive shopping experience and that makes us feel really good.
“When we stop experiencing it we go through a little bit of withdrawal, which leads us back out looking for our next hit.”
Which means back to the mall, where we try to replicate our past experience.
To heighten her thrill, Deidra Hogue, a bargain shopper who is 40 and works as a financial analyst for an automotive supplier, increases the shopping degree of difficulty.
She goes into stores - her favorites include T.J. Maxx, Nordstrom Rack and Marshalls - with low expectations and a resolve to buy something only if it’s a good fit for what’s already in her closet.
That way if she finds something, she gets a charge out of being pleasantly surprised.
Discount stores aren’t neatly packaged “like one of the high-end department stores. You can go into Saks and Neiman’s and find exactly what you’re looking for, but you’re going to pay for it,” Hogue says.
But the biggest reason we shoppers pursue the hunt and revel in its thrill is because the end result makes us feel smart and special. We beat the system by saving a ton of money or by having the power to say no thanks to what is advertised as a good deal, but probably isn’t. At least not for us.
Throw some dopamine in the mix, and how can you not want to get in your car in a snowstorm?
High Profile, Pages 44 on 03/23/2014