Consumer Realization on Overshopping Behavior
Consumers are attracted to deals. Whether it is a small discount or a large one, anything that attracts the consumers towards purchasing that product is what online retailers strive for.
As the online world of shopping increases among this society, Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce website is known for selling and delivering products and goods in a fast, affordable, and coinvent way towards shoppers. With their user-friendly web design and supportive customer feedback, many consumers rely on Amazon as it becomes a primary place for online shopping.
However, what many consumers don’t realize is the push towards selling a product at a certain discount, which leads to ethical issues of over shopping and overspending seen among this corporation. Many of us can blame Amazon for their user experience that entraps consumers in the internet realm of deals and products, many shoppers should realize this issue of overshopping and respond quickly before they lead into other conflicting issues. It’s important to note that Amazon’s goal is to distribute and sell products in a coinvent place online at a relatively affordable and fast option from certain products they receive. With the world of online shopping growing in this society, consumers should realize and acknowledge the sense of overshopping seen among Amazon’s websites.
UX (User Experience) Resulting to Over Shopping Behavior
Amazon’s user experience (UX) is rated as the most appealing website according to functionality and accessibility among most generations in a recent study. With the ease of purchasing, viewing, rating, and delivering products and services online, Amazon fulfills the modern sense of functionality and practicality in terms of user experience for online shopping. While user experience is important towards Amazon’s unique and class-leading technology towards making a consumer purchase something, there are many issues that shoppers should be aware of when shopping on Amazon.
Amazon’s UX is designed in a way that makes shopping easy and orientated towards any specific user that sign’s up and purchases items on Amazon consistently. Just like any online database company, Amazon uses a complex system of algorithms that include:
- Personalized recommendations
- New Products
- Recent Browsing History
- A conveniently located search bar and shopping cart
According to these algorithms, they guide users to a path of purchase and personalize products orientated towards their user-specific customer loyalty. While this may make users come back more frequently on Amazon to purchase specific items and products towards their needs, other times, many users fall into a sense of shopping addiction.
Amazon brings many users a sense of cloud dependency when admiring their UX layout and experience towards giving us the product. While many online consumers chose to shop on Amazon, this corporation has grown a sense of website loyalty seen among their Prime users. For many of you who don’t know, Amazon Prime is their exclusive customer loyalty membership that gets them specific benefits like Prime Video, Music, and other online services at a premium, meanwhile including discounted, fast, and free shipping on many products. This membership “lures customers into giving them extra services whenever a specific need arouses.”
While UX is important in the sense of these memberships that Amazon sells towards in-demand consumers of the online shopping world, deals are what traps consumers into overshopping on items that they might not need.
While you might think you’re getting a great deal on something that you might use later in life, these are the certain habits to be aware of when you’re online shopping. Amazon’s UX implanted a sense of buying anything at any time without going to the store, meanwhile, they can compare and match prices from multiple websites as users tend to avoid the haggling difficulties seen by in-person shopping. Over shopping is a bad habit towards many consumers that are a result of user experience seen among the top e-commerce website like Amazon that many shoppers can be entrapped in. While Amazon can be clearer on this sense of value seen among their UX and membership, it’s only up to the consumer to realize what products can result in their behavior of over shopping.
Virtue Ethics among Over Shopping and Overspending
Virtue Ethics is the understanding of how humans have objective reasons to act virtuously towards behavior that is essential for all humans to flourish and reach their potential. (Plaisance, 2021, 24). There are ethical and moral reasons as to why consumers tend to overshop online more frequently that can create certain issues among the online community. Aristotle stated that virtue ethics should be focused more on social goods rather than individual-centered. (Plaisance, 2021, 24). With that in mind, online shopping is a community since many people rely on reviews and feedback on products that can alter the purchase decision of future consumers. Over-shopping meanwhile is how we view virtue ethics and understand why we have a reason to purchase products that the consumer might not need. However, recognition of over-shopping is not an easy task to discover individually, but rather, a community might guide you to this realization. Realizing “overshopping towards the context of your life will not only alter your behavior but change who you are and what you need.”
While online shopping is essentially a new medium that is counteracting retail shopping in modern society, there are certain ethical issues regarding our behavior towards overshopping. While the internet provides a free marketplace for exchanging services, goods, and ideas, many consumers should realize that ethical issues arise when examining how corporations and e-commerce affect buyers’ behavior. Over shopping can lead consumers into overspending on certain products if they’re not aware of this ethical issue. There are a lot of reasons as to why a consumer might overshop. According to Benson, author of the book “To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop.” Overshopping reasons can be a result of:
- A way to feel better about yourself or more secure
- To avoid dealing with something important
- To hold onto love
- Using it as a weapon to express anger or seek revenge
- To Dominate in wealth and power
- And many more!
Having these subjective reasons provides the consumer a sense of indication towards certain behaviors they have when online shopping. Each reason all lead up to one conclusion that expands on the behavior of overshopping, that many consumers and e-commerce should realize. Having a subjective norm provides a positive effect and attitude towards the shopping behavior we can analyze based on the consumer’s recognition of overshopping.
Going back into Aristotle’s vision of virtue ethics seen among overshopping, the social goods of buying stuff online based on Amazon’s UX or deals is what often leads consumers to overshop on stuff that they might not need. While they might think they’re getting a discount towards a product they seek a reason for purchasing, the result can be a cause of personal overshopping behavior. Is there a benefit towards purchasing that item at a discount or is it a result of Amazon’s UX? Only the consumer can realize this sense given that the community of over shoppers recognize this ethical issue and behavior.
Amazon vs The Consumers
Who should we blame? Amazon or the consumer? Here is a rundown on what you should realize before pointing fingers at the potential stakeholders seen among overshopping. While Amazon is a primary place that leads in online shopping UX, there are certain ways they can change their orientation towards specific users that might potentially overshop. However, when it comes down to overshopping behavior, the consumer is the only one that can realize and act on their behavior.
Amazon is only building on the consumer’s sense of trust when viewing the consumer’s behavior on their user experience and layout of their web design.
Seeing this sense and reliability that Amazon has built from the early ages of online shopping to the modern vision of online retailing, bringing trust builds relationships between consumers and the online retailers. Consumers can appreciate Amazon on their ability to create a leading UX design that provides them a good ethical site compared to poor ethical sites based on the sense of building trust and relationship.
While Amazon can implement ways to prevent the urge to overshopping behavior seen among many consumers within this society, it’s only up to the consumer’s recognition that this behavior is a result of themselves. “Consumers should be made aware that personal information is going to be collected online.” With that information, e-commerce like Amazon is going to use it to sell products orientated to a user-specific liking. However, overshopping is a result of the consumer’s decision to purchase the item in the end. It’s important to note that Overshopping can result in a negative impact on Amazon’s structural layout. For instance, an increase in greenhouse gas emission from packaging your over-shopped item, delivering and returning that item, to the result of overspending on stuff the consumer might not need creating an online monopoly. These are all issues that can disrupt Amazon’s structural layout due to the cause of overshopping and returns they receive based on the consumer’s behavior.
What makes a consumer want to purchase an item is heavily based on reviews they get from a community standpoint online. With Amazon’s UX going to the extent of bringing a detailed description of the product, easy returns, and convenient ways to shop online, this brings trust between the product and supplier that makes Amazon a huge distribution corporation among many individual businesses.
There are many more potential stakeholders that can be involved with the issue of overspending, both Amazon and the consumer can have a take towards what they can react and be and affected by this ethical issue.
Final Thoughts
As the 2021 Holiday season approaches many customers will be shopping online as Amazon approaches their peak season of business. With more deals than ever before and the ergonomic UX that Amazon has created towards the realm of online shopping, overshopping is bound to happen to many unexpected users.
As seen in COVID-19, overshopping is a combination of “boredom and misdirected maternal instinct.” It is more important than ever that consumers should realize and justify their practices when purchasing items through Amazon since many of them can lead to an issue of overshopping, which can lead to overspending within this holiday season. Amazon rose to power since they “nailed convenience, the force of habit and a system to move merchandise from place to place.” Overshopping is a result of many disillusions and unrecognized behavior within the online realm of shopping. With ways that consumers can recognize this behavior and act quickly against it before it becomes a habit is the only way to prevent the urge and sense in overshopping this holiday season. While Amazon, can probably improve on counteracting this issue seen among the UX or web design they have mastered, only the consumer can change their overshopping behavior.
Hopefully, this article brings you awareness of overshopping behavior seen among the online world of shopping through Amazon specifically and makes you more aware of what you need vs what you want when purchasing a product through these services.
