This is how retailers get you to spend more money

As shoppers gear up for Black Friday and the holiday shopping season, it can be easy for people to rack up debt that will weigh them down well into the new year. So it pays for consumers to be aware of some of the tactics retailers employ to get them to spend. 

For example, most offers that dangle savings in the form of free shipping or a free gift if you spend over a certain amount don’t save you money. The practice, called “spaving,” or spending more in order to save, rarely benefits consumers, according to personal finance experts.

“I understand the appeal of getting to checkout and a notification pops up saying spend $10 more to get some perk,” LendingTree senior economist Jacob Channel told CBS MoneyWatch. “But 90% of the time when you break it down, it doesn’t make sense. You’re not actually saving money if you are spending more of it.”

Here are five tactics retailers use to get you to spend more, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), a consumer advocacy group.

Creating a false sense of urgency

The fear of missing out on a good deal can nudge consumers into making impulse buys. Although some offers really are only valid for a limited time, U.S. PIRG identified a number of sellers on Etsy, an e-commerce site for independent craftspeople, who used fake countdown clocks for deals that never expire. 

Of 20 top-selling products on the site with countdown timers on deals, 80% of them simply reset when their tickers tickers hit “0,” according to a PIRG study. 

“The ‘limited’ time window may not be as limited as it sounds and the deals not as good as they seem,” U.S. PIRG’s R.J. Cross told CBS MoneyWatch. “Make your list, comparison shop on those items, and don’t get distracted by offers you haven’t had the time to think through.”

Implying scarcity

Online retailers may label products as “selling fast!” or, as a consumer is considering a purchase, display how many other consumers are browsing the same item.

“Retailers and advertisers are always trying to get you to buy more than you need and spend more than you want,” Cross said in a statement. “Once you know what to look for, you end up chuckling when you see these tactics instead of falling for them.”

Pricing tricks

Ever wonder why a price reads $4.99 and not simply $5? When sellers round an item’s price down, it suggests to a shopper that it is cheaper, PIRG notes. Although $4.99 is only a penny less than $5, a shopper is more likely to fixate on the dollar figure — $4 — versus the cents. 

Even removing a comma from a high sticker price like $1,200 and displaying it as $1200 can entice someone to pull the trigger, according to PIRG. Meanwhile, breaking the cost of an item down into monthly installments can also make the price seem smaller than it really is, the organization noted. 

“You’re still going to have to pay the full cost, and sometimes even more in late fees, if you’re not careful,” Cross pointed out. 

Dubious testimonials

Many retailers feature online testimonials ostensibly from customers raving about a “life-changing” vacuum cleaner or pair of sweatpants. Some of these account are from real customers, while other reviews cannot be trusted because they have been generated by a bot or the company itself, PIRG said.

At bottom, it’s a form of peer pressure — shoppers are subtly induced to think that buying the product will make them as happy as the satisfied customers depicted in the testimonial. In reality, many online reviews are fake, especially as AI bots proliferate. 

“When you look at reviews on a product, don’t necessarily take the star ratings for granted. Better to look through the comments and find those that seem real — that either include a picture of the product or that make a point specific to the product instead of a generic note like ‘great product!'” Cross recommends.

Appeals based on fear

Many marketing pitches and ads suggest that your life will somehow be worse if you don’t make a purchase, from being at risk of a home invasion to hair loss. With e-commerce, of course, such messages are tailored to your individual interests and tastes given that website cookies track share your browsing patterns with retailers.

Messages “about how to fix our perceived flaws only become more capable of finding us at all hours of the day whenever we go online,” Cross said.