Beware this year’s holiday shopping craze: Mobile mania
Our fancy mobile devices are meant to make our lives easier. But am I the only one feeling like the smartphone in my purse is complicating holiday shopping?
Retailers like Target are luring customers through social networks, offering special deals if you check the store’s Facebook page or respond to a tweet. Sites like Gilt Groupe, Amazon, and HSN are aggressively emailing you about sales during peak shopping times (like they did on Black Friday and surely will continue to do), in the hopes that you’ll abandon your spot in line to shop online. And location-based mobile apps like Foursquare and Shopkick offer you rewards points and discounts by simply recognizing when you walk into a store.
Head spinning yet? The truth is that while all these spiffy mobile-based deals have the potential to turn into real savings, they’re just as likely to succeed at their primary goal: to increase your spending.
We already know that paying with a credit card can inspire you to spend twice as much as you would with cash by reducing your “pain of payment,” and a leading researcher in this field, Joydeep Srivastava, professor of marketing and consumer psychology at the University of Maryland, assures me that the effect could be as drastic—or worse—when paying with a mobile device. Market analysts are already noting that people who shop on their tablets are more likely to pull the trigger on a purchase, and tend to spend up to 20 percent more than those shopping on a traditional PC.
Times and technologies change, but my advice stays the same: To avoid blowing your holiday budget, stick strictly to your list. If a deal alert from Gilt Groupe just happens to be offering that sweater your daughter wants for 50 percent off, by all means, snag it. But when your phone is blowing up with today-only deals on stuff your list doesn’t cover (three nights in Costa Rica!), put the gadget back in your pocket.
