Australians like to shop. E-commerce alone has become a $27.5 billion annual industry in Australia – and that trend is growing at a 24.4 per cent year-on-year rate.

 

Sitting atop the ever-growing mountain of sales periods is the weekend of Black Friday (29 November) and its newer counterpart Cyber Monday (2 December). They’re part of a frenzied American tradition that has, in recent years, made its way across the Pacific to become Australia’s largest e-commerce shopping week. In fact, retailer Cotton On have previously predicted that there sales will increase 10-fold on the shopping weekend.

 

There are downsides to all this shopping, though. Among them is fast fashion – cheap textile ephemera that’s leading to an unprecedented waste epidemic in Australia. These days, you can buy a $4 cotton t-shirt that uses 2,700 litres of water to produce. And it turns out that 1.7 million Australians buy a pair of jeans over any given fortnight, much of which eventually contributes to the 500,000+ tonnes of clothing that ends up in landfill every year. On top of these sustainability concerns, there’s also the personal cost. On average, Australians spend $243 per week on retail goods – a figure that adds up quick.

 

If you feel the need to slow down your spending this Black Friday, here are five handy tricks to resist buying on impulse for the sake of the sale.

You’re probably aware of well-worn marketing tricks, time-honoured sales techniques that range from establishing word of mouth to implementing psychological pricing strategies, such as shaving a cent off an item’s price to create the illusion of value.

 

But how do our personal shopping behaviours play a role? Between 40 and 80 per cent of purchases are bought on impulse, based on behavioural traits that we’re often not conscious of, and marketers know this. The chocolate industry, for instance, is known to market their products by appealing to our ‘emotional operating system’ – the cognitive function that governs tendencies and habits. Modern digital marketing is also more targeted, sophisticated, and at times deceptive than ever before.

 

Learn to see marketing for what it is: a sales tool. Make sure it’s not leading you towards unnecessary products and, most importantly, that you’re not the victim of unethical advertising practices (outlined here by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission).

Self-check is an important step in controlling impulse buying. Before a dizzying sales period like Black Friday, consider the items you’d like to buy and order them into things you need, things you want, or things you simply desire.

 

Needs should be fairly obvious – those smelly old runners that need replacing, the absent toaster you keep forgetting to buy. Pop these items at the top of your list.

 

For the next two tiers – wants and desires – try to narrow down your list as much as possible. You may want that hat, but will you wear it? You may desire that new floor lamp, but do you have space for it? The more you can shave off the list, the better.

Before a shopping spree, make a budget with a realistic maximum spending amount – as in, the absolute most you’re willing to spend. Once you’ve got a figure in mind, create a system to keep a live tally of what you spend on the day.

 

In an age of touch-and-go transactions – and where one in six consumers have trouble with credit card debt – keeping track of your expenses can be difficult. But there are lots of tried-and-true ways to keep tabs on your money, like the ‘envelope system‘ (assigning cash to different envelopes labelled with specific criteria, like ‘shoes’), or writing down what you’re spending as you check out and subtracting that from your total tally. For tech-savvy spenders, there are also loads of great personal finance apps, such as Wally.

A great way to curb impulse buying is by finding renewed value in what you already own. For many of us, going through a wardrobe or forgotten storage area is full of wonder and potential. Maybe that poncho you only wore once on that weekend in the country is less daggy than you remember. A new waterproof jacket, no cost!

 

It could also be more economical to have an item fixed or altered rather than replaced. The longer you use an item, the less waste there is in the long run – particularly when the item in question hasn’t exceeded its lifespan. It’s an idea at the centre of the circular economy.

A prudent shopper - and therefore a less impulsive one - will research an item prior to buying it to make sure it’s the best quality and value. Sites like Amazon and  productreview.com.au offer good ideas of what people are saying about a particular product. Then there are dozens of comparison services, like Google Shopping and ShopSavvy, to help you shop around for price.

 

It’s also worth considering an alternative version of the same item. Pop into your local op-shop, for instance. You might find an even better-fitting pair of jeans than those brand-new ones on High Street – and for a fraction of the cost.