vitamin c. Shoppers, stop!

It’s the season of mindless shopping again. And it’s the ideal time to think of Erma Bombeck, an American humorist. Bombeck once called shopping probably the most underrated contact sport in the world. I agree. I’m sure many of our readers will also nod in agreement. Many times, after shopping, we come out bleeding and gasping, knowing fully well we’d go back there again.

Contact sports, as we know very well, are injurious to health if one plays them without the necessary gear. All players do wear protection; sporting bodies have rules to make players do so. But in shopping there are no such rules. We think it is an easy sport. And always end up indulging in it unguarded.

Unguarded indeed I was when I first performed a serious shopping activity almost two decades ago. I had just cleared my Class X exam. A benevolent uncle felt I had scored more than what he thought I would. So he gifted me some money and asked me to buy a gift of my own choice. Elated, I immediately went to the nearby town and hopped into a shopping centre. Just then I realised I did not know how to shop. I never learnt it among the so many useful things I was taught in my school. I never got a chance to learn it from my parents either, despite the numerous shopping jaunts I had been on with them.

Shopping, many feel, is an easy science. Something that is more instinctive, like I felt inside the shop as I bought a pair of canvas shoes – white, laced and with a decent amount of heel. After I reached home and started using my product, I realised my choice was all wrong. In ‘it-never-stops-raining’ Kerala, a canvas shoe can drag you down each time you step into the rains. For a schoolboy always short of time and rushing to catch something or the other, laces are a killjoy. And the heel looked an embarrassment on my feet and hampered more than it enhanced. The buy was a mistake.

Buying is a complex decision-making process, behavioural economists remind us time and again. It is an activity where psychology, sociology and neurology blend to make an economic impact. And that’s why pundits such as Dan Ariely or Daniel Kahneman tell us we must not take it easy. We know it’s activity that needs training and strategy. And the sooner you start your practice, the better.

Yet, even today, our schools do not teach children the very basic science of ‘how to buy’ the right way. The existing syllabuses let children learn the art and craft of buying as a lateral exercise, or part of bedevilled theory lessons, but surely not as hard-nosed functional lessons. In an age where young tech-savvy teens shop online, sitting inside the happy interior of a coffee shop or their study room, or even while on the go, buying becomes an activity that defies most of the known tenets. Even children spend decent enough money today on their own, thanks to the easiness of online shopping and digital payments.

Digital shopping is just one of the many areas where buying has become a seemingly simple, yet complex, activity. Obviously, it has been transforming shopping by taking away the physical from it. With touch-and-feel being replaced by look-and-read, buying decisions enter a new territory and most of us end up making the wrong choices -- be it buying the wrong products, or from a company with a horrible after-sales record or products we may never enjoy using, and many more.

The only solution to this is to learn ‘how to buy’ scientifically. Let’s have schools that offer functional classes to students on buying. And let’s have them as early as in the primary classes itself. Let’s have refresher courses and layperson-training programmes on consumer awareness and consumption exercises and attitudes. Consultancies, government agencies, companies and sellers — all have a role to play here. No doubt, an educated consumer is the delight of an industry, not the one who forgets rules and gets beaten badly. Consumers, like contact sportsmen, need to know this thumb rule. Happy shopping!

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