Clicking 'add to cart' may spark joy for now. Don't expect it to last

Year-end sales promise deals and delight, but often leave behind clutter, regret and environmental costs. It's time to shop with more intention.

- Michelle Lee

It's that action-packed time of the year - not in terms of work, but of shopping. The end-of-year shopping season typically kicks off on Nov 11, popularly known as Singles Day - and is followed about two weeks later by Black Friday. And in case in-store shopping proves to be too much of a test of stamina, the hunt for online deals continues at Cyber Monday and 12/12 sale events.

And as people rush to stores online and off for their Christmas shopping, the frenzy carries on all the way till Boxing Day, when stores traditionally slash prices after Christmas.

For years, retailers have had a knack for leaning into social phenomena and leveraging them for commercial gain. Black Friday, for instance, started out in the 1950s, when throngs of visitors to Philadelphia the day after Thanksgiving created policing and crowd control concerns.

Retailers quickly turned the presence of crowds into a marketing opportunity, and Black Friday has since become one of the biggest shopping events in the US.

And it seems that consumers have been lapping it up. According to Mastercard's SpendingPulse report, Black Friday sales online grew 14.6 per cent in 2024 from 2023.

While Shopee Singapore declined to disclose overall sales volumes or year-on-year comparisons for the 2024 Singles' Day event, it sold more than 100,000 items in the first 11 minutes of the sale. In Singapore, orders placed on Shopee Live - the e-commerce giant's livestream platform - were 20 times that of an average day.

While some of us might take advantage of these discounts to buy things we would have bought anyway, these events do more than just shift the timing of purchases.

The thrill of getting a good deal - fuelled by the nature of such sales events - often draws us into buying more than we necessarily need.

But why do we consume as much as we do?

SHOPPING FOR PLEASURE