Confessions Of An Ex-Shopaholic: A Journey To Change Consumer Behaviour
Sofia Ribeiro, Marketing Wizard, gets upfront and personal with her own struggles between shopping and the environment.
Today I’d like to share a personal story: mine. I used to be this shopaholic addicted to fashion. Shoes, clothes, hats, earrings, bags, you name it – I’d get it. Having lived in Milan, one gets used to considering your look as an important feature of one self (I’d actually spend over 50% of my paycheck on fashion items). My partner would even make fun of me for having over 60 pairs or shoes, “when all you have is two feet.”
The ridiculous thing about all this is that I have always cared about the environment. I would feel good about recycling, and thought I was doing my share. I fell for the same mistake many consumers are “victims” of: I had changed my routine just a tad to help the environment, and felt so good about it that making a further change didn’t cross my mind. Thank God those days are long over!
I can’t point to a specific moment in my life when I started changing, but suddenly I was more active on my environmental values. I began volunteering at local parks and I can’t forget my shock when I saw dozens of shopping bags muddled up among the trees. Suddenly, those plastic bags that used to carry the hats, shoes and tops that I was so mad about didn’t have the same allure next to old beer cans and discarded newspapers (and yes, I was still at the park).
On my next shopping trip (and these happened almost on a daily basis), I noticed the number of people carrying around those cute shopping bags happily down the street, and that completely turned me off from shopping. I couldn’t erase the image of those same bags covering the grounds of my favourite park.
Next thing I know, I started looking at my clothes and shoes differently. I found the pleasure of rediscovering items that lived on the bottom of my closet and my partner even commented that it had been a while since he heard me say “I don’t have anything to wear today” (that’s how silly I was).
Reducing Is Kinda Cool
It took me six full months to discover the pleasure of reducing. I now spend under $800 a year in clothing and accessories, a significant reduction for someone who used to invest over $15,000 on fashion items. I actually spend more money per item now, but the clothing really lasts. Not only that, I’ve also applied the same motto to different areas of my life, and I have stopped buying furniture (it’s amazing how much great stuff you can find on Craigslist). I’m also eating less and I’ve never felt happier and more accomplished in my life.
It was then that Cecilia and I decided to start Kiwano Marketing: to promote sustainable lifestyles through marketing.
Focusing On The First R: Reduce
I guess I took the long way here to reach the main purpose of this blog post: as marketers, we need to dedicate more time on the importance of reducing. True, marketers are supposed to sell products. But why don’t we use our extensive knowledge on consumer behaviour to make reducing cool and alluring? And there are already fantastic products out there already made of 100% used materials and/or 100% reusable.
By making reducing the new black, companies can manufacture less products and still have room to charge more per item, keeping or increasing their profits. Reducing campaigns also have a great buzz potential, and if the campaign is well executed, those organizations that take the initial step into this new business mentality will enjoy fantastic word-of-mouth.
It’s time to move the green industry from products that are organic and biodegradable. These qualities are significant, but no longer enough – and soon they will be a standard and mandatory. We need the next revolution: reducing.
So that’s my personal story… what’s yours?
Recommended reading:
Motivating Mainstream Consumers to Make Sustainable Choices
What Is A Sustainable Brand?
Avoiding The Greenwash: Best Green Practices for Small Businesses
Sofia, I love this article. I’ve taken similar steps to reduce my own consumption of goods, and enjoy using sites like craigslist to pass on the items I no longer want to other people who can still use them.
Actually, I have a great story to share that’s kind of related to yours…
My partner went with a friend one day to dispose of some demo materials at the landfill. He noticed a huge stainless steel BBQ next to a dumpster, with all the bells and whistles, rotisserie, side burner, ice bucket, lighting for BBQ-ing in the dark – this BBQ had everything, and there it was about to become garbage. So he asked the attendant if he could have it, and was told absolutely! He took it home and discovered it only needed one $20 part to make it work perfectly.
In the end we decided we didn’t need a $1000 BBQ, so we sold it on Craigslist at a rock bottom price to an extremely happy customer! This so-called “garbage” is now being enjoyed by a family of seven.
It’s amazing what people consume and then throw away unnecessarily. I agree that marketing reduced consumption can be really cool and profitable. It just requires a different way of thinking about how we consume the products we use every day.
Thanks for this!
Jessica
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@Jessica Oman,
Thanks for sharing your story! It’s unbelievable the kind of items that end up in the dumpster.
One of the things I like about Vancouver, BC, is that reusing is not just the tree-hugging crowd – it’s quite common. My next challenge is to take this mentality across the ocean.
Best,
Sofia
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Not a day too soon dear Sofia! If only people in the West understood it sooner than later, things would be better for the whole world because consumption by human beings(of everything) is lot more there as compared to Asian sub-continent) and that contributes faster to the degradation of Earth. Furter, if only we in Asian countries did not have to copy everything of the West (shopping bags is now a latest nuisance and choking here and what of personal consumption going up with the economy shaping up).
This world needs a lot of individual care, irrespective of the location one is in and geographical boundry.
Ramesh
Hi @Ramesh Kaul,
Thanks for your insights! You have a very good point there: we should learn from the mistakes of others. I see a lot of great initiatives in this field coming from India. How do you feel about it?
Cheers,
Sofia
Sofia – great points, as someone who is “fashion-challenged” (trends could pass me by many years before I’d notice), while I can’t say I relate to that exact example, I definitely feel the underlying thread of the frugal story.
I am a big believer in buying/using less, and, assuming it’s an item that will be needed and used for years if not decades, obtaining higher quality at a higher (slightly, with any luck) price, beats disposable junk any day of the week.
I find, frequently, that people who don’t think twice about buying tens to hundreds of throwaway items (like Happy Meal toys) over a period of time, spending hundreds of dollars for an end result of a house full of junk, don’t see how that is a radically different proposition than buying a single (or choose the quantity) of QUALITY items for the same price, perhaps even for less.
Rethink, reduce, reuse, recycle sums it all up for me – getting people to reduce, reuse, recycle begins with rethinking – and it’s getting to the initial “ah-ha!” that kicks off the rest, that’s the real trick.
Best,
Dan
Dan, I love your addition to the usual ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ refrain. Rethinking is really what it’s about! And even reframing…
Sofia, I love your story and I hope lots of people will follow your example. When my husband and I were both highly-paid (a long time ago) we decided we didn’t want to adopt a lifestyle that made us dependent on those incomes. We didn’t know exactly why, but we didn’t want to be slaves to big-paying big business. So we adopted a frugal lifestyle, and put all ’surplus’ cash into paying off the mortgage, buying expensive musical gear (it’s MUCH cheaper now!) or splurging on fantastic holidays with the kids.
Finally we found out why. Our frugal lifestyle has enabled us to work for nearly two decades with sustainable lifestyle in Global Action Plan – which certainly can’t afford big-business salaries, sometimes none at all. Over the years we’ve reached a couple of million people with our action programs. Nice but not enough! Maybe what we need now is some of your marketing expertise… It’s really time to join forces and gear up, isn’t it?
To all of you, blessings for the work you’re doing. Let’s swarm!
Marilyn – Rethinking or Reframing – either works for me. Glad to have stumbled onto your blog. Hope we can continue the discussion and fire up action, for quite some time into the future.
Keep up the great work.
Dan
This report: http://www.unep.fr/scp/marrakech/taskforces/lifestyles.htm from the Taskforce on Sustainable lifestyles deals with a number of the points made above – an interesting read.
Hello, first of all, I want to note that I think it’s a amazing blog you have got here. What I wanted to ask is, I haven’t understood how to add your web-site feed in my rss reader – where’s the link for the rss feed? Thank you
@Jacques Rienstra,
Thanks for your kind words. You can sign up for our RSS feed on the top of this page, on your left (just on top of the menu “The Kiwano Marketing Blog.”
Cheers,
Sofia