What Kind of Shopper Goes Out to the Black Friday Sales?

Soon it will be here again - shoppers and Black Friday. It's a day to keep shoppers out of the red, and in the black. The first offerings of best bargains will be here for the offering. Who will be there? What kind of shopper profiles will be amongst the crowds?

Even if the Black Friday sales are the best in town, some will still spend more than they want to. They will be egged on by the "good" prices, and in turn, feel as if they can justify picking up just a few more items. The painful experience of spending more than is reasonable doesn't stop the chronic over spending.

But, there is a flip side to the same pain experienced at the checkout register according to an article in the National Science Foundation Newsletter discussing an experiment using MRI technology. Not spending enough, or as much as desired is painful, too. But either way, the pain is diminished when paying with a credit card.

A scale comparing tightwads and spendthrifts brings a median line that joins the two ranges together. Buying for someone else reduces the painful effects of the shopping experience according to Scott Rick, a Marketing Professor at the University of Michigan.

If this theory is true, and Black Friday precipitates the Christmas shopping season, will everyone be shopping at the same "ho, ho, ho" level?

Considered an expert, Rick describes patterns observed through MRI experiments he and his colleagues conducted while attending Carnegie Melon graduate school. He states that, when buying for others, the tightwads and the spendthrifts end up spending the same amount of money.

These findings were published in the "Journal of Marketing Research," and the "Annual Review of Psychology and Neuron."

Though Rick has come forth with these findings, there are others who have psychological explanations to add. It's more of universal theme, but a sampling of each category may be in the crowds at the Black Friday sales.

Paul J. Albanese, studied economics but changed over to psychology when he couldn't agree with the teachings of economic theories regarding human behavior.

According to this new perspective on economics, four different personality categories branch out in varying degrees of intensity. Believed to provide market researchers with more accuracy and detail - Albanese describes normal, neurotic, primitive, psychotic in that order. More gray area to ponder is that the not-normal folks have good days when they may pass as normal.

The Normal type consumers earn their namesake category because of being consistent and predictable. Neurotic shoppers are ambivalent, indecisive individuals. Primitives are a pain in the neck to everyone around them. Compulsives will max out a credit card, and spend every dollar they have when binging on excess. Psychotic shopping is the low-end extreme where people have been arrested for passing bad checks.

Ignoring these nuances could influence the premises that the marketers use for judging a trend as well as the motivations behind the trend. After twenty five years of research, the economic psychologist states that a marketer must be able to distinguish someone who has bipolar disorder from someone who simply operates at the primitive level.

The kind of shopper that comes out for the Black Friday sales depends on the perspective.