2016 brings hope for an end to excessive consumerism – Marwa Benaichouche – Walthamstow Academy
As Christmas shopping made a start as early as November’s Black Friday sales, where the American tradition encompasses London’s streets, the beginning of the crazy holiday shopping season has begun. However as the 25th approaches, the end of shopping is yet to be seen as shoppers splash out on Boxing day. With post-Christmas shoppers predicted to go on a ‘£3.85 billion bargain hunt on, spending £2.95 billion on the high street and another £900 million online’, according to Centre for Retail Research; all the spending makes us wonder when and where did the tradition begin?
'Boxing Day' can be traced back to the Victorian era when churches often displayed a box into which their parishioners put donations. Servants would be handed a box to take home on Christmas, containing gifts, bonuses and sometimes-leftover food. From which derived the name ‘Boxing Day’. This tradition endures as Boxing Day shopping becomes a way for retailers to get rid of holiday stock and as a result of large Christmas spending the ‘Boxing Day’ sales give people reason to keep on buying followed by the largely popular ‘January sales’.
2016 is the first year we see the numbers of crowds lining up post Christmas decreasing! ‘A quarter of Britons (23 per cent) will shop in the Boxing Day sales, down from thirty two per cent in 2015’, according to Barclaycard. The figures suggest the incentive to buy in the sales has weakened following widespread discounting during the year and prior to Christmas: Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The decrease in shoppers in 2016 prompts the questions, is this the beginning to a gradual end to excessive consumerism and will the need to shop stay just a Christmas tradition? The need to purchase things we don’t need nor can afford is sparked by the presumably ‘cant be missed’ sales on days like ‘Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing day’.
Ryan Howell, an associate professor of psychology states the impulse to buy, in part, is a survival instinct. Back in our hunter and gatherer days, when people saw something they wanted, they’d grab it, even if they didn’t need it, because it was likely they wouldn’t come across that item again. When we see a 50% off clearance price tag, that scarcity impulse kicks into gear, Howell said. The feeling is, if we don’t buy that item now, it’s going to be gone forever — or at least at that good price.’
In addition to the worldwide human instinct to purchase the toll taken on the Pound due to Brexit saw many Tourists crowd the streets of London to grab foreign bargains. Harrods, like other UK retailers, has benefited from tourist spending since the pound’s sharp fall against other currencies after the EU referendum in June.
The fall in consumers from 2015 to 2016 in ‘Boxing day’ can foreshadow an end to excessive consumerism or simply an increase of consumers on additional yearly sales such as ‘Black Friday’.
Marwa Benaichouche – Walthamstow Academy
