Why we keep buying more - Part 1: Consumption choices

As a professional organiser, I believe that spending is one of the most important aspects of managing everyday life in the life of a busy career person with a family. Our consumption decisions have far-reaching consequences, even if many of them are made on a whim. Resisting consumption is very difficult and requires resources and tools. Why do we keep buying and consuming more and more?

This article is part of the Why do we buy? series of articles, which I want to take up as professional organizer that has M.Sc. in Business and Economics. I want to understand my own behaviour and the reasons behind different phenomena, so that I can change my actions. I hope that you too will find in these articles new perspectives and tools for your own everyday strategy.

Due to my background I have studied, among other things, human buying behaviour and marketing. I have been marketing and selling products and services for more than twenty years, so I have both a scientific and experiential background in consumption and buying behaviour as a consumer and professional. For the last few years I have also been a professional organiser for families with children.

Let's first take a look at the phenomenon of buying and consuming: why do we keep buying and consuming more and more? At the end you will find a selection of tools to work on your own consumption. From the content, you can jump to the section you want.

What does it mean to buy and consume?

Put simply, we buy food and goods to meet our basic needs. By buying, we consume goods that are produced for the purpose of buying. Goods are produced because someone buys them, i.e. there is a demand for them. Goods that no one wants to buy are withdrawn from shops: the supply and production of goods is therefore driven by consumers' purchasing decisions.

At its most minimum, humans need food and shelter in the form of housing and clothing. These real needs can be met relatively easily in the Western societys.

In a nutshell, the rest of our purchases are more driven by our desires than necessary for survival. You can read from a previous article the difference between need and want.

What is a good enough home - comparing needs and wants

Most of us need a few thousand things to feel comfortable. But our homes are starting to contain tens, even hundreds of thousands of individual items.

Even the most minimalist person has to make an effort from time to time not to buy non-essentials, such is the fundamental cultural phenomenon we are talking about.

Have you ever wondered why we buy and spend? Why is it that in the end no one thing seems to be enough, and we always want to find more, updated or a little better?

Consumption as part of culture and identity

Buying (collecting) is a species-specific human activity. Not only has there been a lot of public research on buying behaviour, but companies now know our preferences down to the pixel. Shoppers are also guided in many ways.

Our society is currently built around consumption. This is based on the idea that by consuming we become wealthy as a community. We pass this idea on to the next generation by example.

However, consumption does not directly increase individual satisfaction, although it can be possible to increase satisfaction by consuming experiences. Consumption of goods has not been found to lead to lasting satisfaction. Why do we keep buying and consuming more and more?

If the basic idea is that we satisfy our needs by consuming, then this assumption breaks down quite quickly when we actually observe human consumption patterns. It is not logical, but driven by desire. As I said earlier, most of our consumption decisions are desires rather than needs.

Of course, it's not that simple. As consumers, we often buy more than the physical product itself. A good means more to us than its mere use value.

On consumption, consumer culture and consumer society, the Article from consumption is divided into five different styles. These will give you a good idea of the diversity of the phenomenon. We can have many consumption styles and they vary throughout our lives.

Conspicuous Consumption

Some people want to spend big and showy. According to Veblen, the first generation to prosper from industrialisation continued to consume moderately, but since then some of the next generation have moved into a culture of bragging.

Bragging is, as the name implies, boasting to increase one's status and prestige. Consciously or unconsciously, bragging is a way of making others jealous and enhancing one's own status.

I think it is noteworthy that this kind of consumption occurs among the rich, the middle class and the poor, so this consumption style is not about real wealth, but about the creation of meaning.

Symbolic Consumption

Through symbolic consumption, people want to associate their own self with the brand image that comes with the goods. Such consumption is also linked to ethical purchases and the expression of one's own values, as symbolic consumption is used to communicate to others, including companies.

Consuming luxury products is a way of communicating one's status in the community to those perceived to be like others, as well as to the so-called lower social class.

Refusing to make consumption decisions would also be symbolic, although in this case this action would have to be communicated to others in order to realise symbolic brand value.

Addictive Consumption

Addictive consumption is when a purchase is made because the buyer is addicted to the purchased good.

This is particularly evident in purchases of alcohol, drugs and games, but it can also be due to a phone or coffee addiction.

The driving force behind this kind of consumption is the addiction itself.

Compulsive Consumption

Part of the population feels a compulsive need to buy. The compulsive buyer buys more, even if he already has his basic needs and comfort needs met. Nothing seems to be enough, and there is always a reason to buy one more, the next, and the next.

Often this behaviour is an attempt to deal with experiences of stress, anxiety or boredom.

This kind of buying, or overspending, is also still accepted in our culture. We also have expressions such as "retail therapy" that support the acceptability of overspending.

The remarkable thing about compulsive consumption is that, over time, it also becomes addictive. When you react to challenging situations or emotions by buying, buying becomes a stronger part of your toolbox, which contributes to further overconsumption.

The over-consumption of men has been found to be linked to products that display power (tools, vehicles, weapons) and to the social relations and status of women (cosmetics, clothing).

Compulsive consumption is when 1) the behaviour cannot be changed by choosing to change, 2) the pleasure is only momentary, and 3) the consumption results in regret.

Sacred Consumption

Sacred consumption is an experience of deep respect and can be linked to spirituality. Events that are repeated in a ritualistic way and are important to the buyer are sacred consumption.

Today, sacred consumption has become mixed with experientialism, as companies have started to offer events and sacred goods instead of religious ones.

Consumers who are very brand-loyal may experience sacred consumerism when they buy Apple devices, for example, or when they attend an event that is important to them year after year, be it the Opera Festival or Moominland.

I listed above five consumption styles that explain some of our consumption behaviour.

None of us is immune to the consumer society. I think it's good if you can identify your own behaviour from the list, as it will help you in the future. After all, companies know our consumption patterns and our multiple reasons for buying. We are therefore being targeted by marketing, even manipulation, which, for example, the EU's new Digital Services Act is trying to protect consumers online.

By understanding the underlying mechanisms, you can better distinguish between need and want, and control your own buying. It is better to buy consciously than not to understand your own thought processes.

So why do we keep buying more and more?

This is a very complex and difficult subject, even if our spending habits are moderate and healthy, we may still wonder why we keep buying and spending more and more?

This involves disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, marketing, economics and politics, and this list is not even exhaustive, so there is a huge range of possible answers.

Modern science has taken giant leaps forward. For example, an understanding of neuromarketing makes it easier to understand why gamified marketplaces like TEMU trigger the online shopping mania. It is difficult for an individual to resist the temptation when the other party knows with nerve fibre precision where to pull the string.

The gift economy, the exchange economy and the consumer society explain buying and the system of buying in terms of the expression of culture and identity. Our expectations of ourselves and of each other are multiple: we understand and value each other through purchased manifestations, such as the impression created by cars, clothes or jewellery.

Our brains categorise and attach people to strands of the social network based on our perceptions. Shopping reflects our values, whether we think about it or not. So we interpret each other and the hierarchical position of others through goods. We buy because it feels good and seems to benefit us.

We also react to world events by buying: the war in Ukraine did not make life any easier for anyone seeking refuge in buying goods, quite the opposite. Stocks became even more full, for a rainy day, as the hunter-gatherer prepared. Toilet paper ran out as the race for the brightest crown was waged in an emotionally driven shopping war.

More is more - Why does our mind guide us to hoard and make it difficult to declutter?

The unbearable lightness of buying

We are living in an era which I think will be seen as a major turning point in hindsight. Buying is too easy: it is possible 24/7 with e-commerce, it is too cheap because of, among other things, oversupply and regulatory circumvention, and it is still largely socially acceptable.

The great revolution in consumer trade after the world wars allowed for an unprecedented increase in convenience in the everyday life of the ordinary person. Suddenly there were cheap plastic stools, washing machines and mass-produced clothes - for everyone in the West.

The flood of goods that has accumulated over the past decades began.

The explosion of e-commerce over the past decade is sealing the tidal wave of goods with the free global economy.

The pace is accelerating, as we have entered the era of the clutter economy in recent years. We have seen an unprecedented wave of small package orders sweep across Finland and the whole globe with the arrival of new online retail giants.

Policymakers are now frantically considering how to curb overheated online trade, while protecting both their own economies from manufacturers circumventing regulations and the planet and people from the toxins of unregulated products.

As a community, we can decide that overspending is not ok

However, the situation at the moment (1/2025) is that online shops that entice you to buy are legal. Products containing a few euros of phthalates and heavy metals can be imported at your own risk, for example from Shein or Temu, from the other side of the globe for almost "free" and without customs fees to Finland, when the purchase is less than 150 euros.

Of course, this cannot continue, but at the moment we have a big responsibility as individual buyers to intervene in our own actions.

There are therefore ways to limit purchasing at both individual and societal level. For example, purchasing can be restricted in the interests of public health, and pollution from production and logistics can be penalised. This would make buying more difficult, i.e. less attractive.

The field is now buzzing: the Finnish Consumers' Association and European consumer organisations, for example made a complaint against Temu in May 2024.

Even big ships turn, albeit slowly. As a community, we can decide that overconsuming is not okay because of the many problems. The problems posed by the amount of goods in people's homes are still quite marginal in the public debate, even though this challenge is already enormous in Western homes. I expect this to change soon, although I would love to be wrong about this.

Why we keep buying more and more is a question that has no single easy answer, but I will try to summarise one now: We keep buying more and more because we can and have chosen not to.

I hope that this brief history of consumption has opened up some new perspectives. Here's a list of recommendations from me as a professional organiser for you if you want to change your own consumption choices.

Recommendations from a professional organiser to shape your own consumption choices

If you're sick and tired of maintaining your belongings and running around in a mountain of laundry, here are a few easy ways to question your own spending habits.

If you know in the back of your mind that part of the problem might be your family's consumption choices, try these!

The Year of Five New Clothes opens the eyes of even the most moderate shopper

Have you already tried the Five Clothes of the Year challenge? There's still time to enter for 2025!

The Year of Five Clothes is a challenge by influencers Julia Thurén and Aku Varamäki which they launched a couple of years ago. It gives you the chance to buy five new pairs of shoes or clothes in a year. Recycled purchases don't count, nor do underwear and socks.

"The five-clothes limit is loosely based on a report by the Hot or Cool Institute on what a sustainable amount for the planet would be for an annual clothing purchase," says Consumer's Union of Finland on their blog. Aku Varamäki and Sissi Penttilä also published a book on the subject, 2024.

All you need to do to jump on board is to keep your own records. Try it!

Sticking to the shopping list will burn out the impulse buyer

If it is not on the list, it cannot be purchased. This is especially useful for impulse buying.

By using a good old shopping list, you limit your own spending with an external tool. A shopping list also makes it easier to explain to your children why you don't shop for impulse purchases.

I recommend you keep the purchase on your list for a month before making it. In this time you will see if it is a real need or a desire.

Time limit and budget to help with the endless online shopping binge

Were you about to buy that one thing you needed, but got stuck in an online shop in a world of all the lovely clothes? If you're scrolling through the screen minute after minute, and eventually hour after hour, you've fallen victim to endless scrolling.

You are not alone. A third of consumers feelthat they are being pulled to spend more time online than they would like.

The EU has set Regulations to avoid the endless scrolling pages of the web. Responsible parties have therefore modified their websites so that infinite scrolling is not possible. Even so, it is easy to get stuck with the goods on an e-commerce site.

Personally, I wear a lot of recycled clothes and I can easily find myself spending unnecessary time in the online clothes shop, especially when I'm tired and stressed. Knowing this, I now always have either a time or budget constraint to help me.

Moreover, I do not make a purchase decision immediately, even if the shop tries to make me feel rushed. Even if there is only one piece of recycled clothing on offer, I still don't buy on the same day, but return to the shopping basket several times to assess my shopping time. This way I can be more confident that I won't buy something I'll regret or face an unnecessary return hassle.

Clarifying values puts consumption back into perspective

I strongly recommend doing a values exercise and sitting down with your values to make sure that your spending decisions serve your current values.

Values give you another good gauge of whether you really need and want to buy something that feels important in the moment but may be worthless tomorrow.

Do you want any new jars, pots, clothes or shoes to roll into your home? Lovely though they may be, they add to the housework and may take you further away from the life you value.

The urge to buy is reduced when you think about how buying or not buying serves the big picture.

The challenge of increasing the savings rate

If you find that buying gives you a good feeling (this is normal, buying releases feel-good hormones, but the feeling doesn't last long), then play around with saving.

Calculate your current savings rate from your net income and decide to increase your savings rate. You'll find that you start to weigh certain purchases more carefully by nature. Savings will increase and spending will decrease, eventually leading to less shopping.

There are several applications you can use to increase your savings rate. For your own budget tracking, I can recommend the YNAB app, which also lets you see how quickly or slowly money is disappearing from your account.

Consumption is part of our society and in many ways necessary. However, I believe that small choices make a big difference, especially if we as a larger group decide to change the way we consume.

I also believe that our homes will be happier when we moderate our spending. A home with moderate spending will have more life and free time, and less stress from all the shopping that comes with it.