This year’s holiday shopping season is right around the corner. The global pandemic has caused so much stress to many people’s lives and maybe you just can’t wait to get some retail therapy done for you and your loved ones. But before you pull out your wallet, spend a minute and think about the strategies that marketers use to make you pay for more products than you need. Do you know the decisions you are making as a consumer have the potential to change a child’s life and the future of the planet? If you want to start making a difference as a consumer, watching these four documentaries can be the first step for you to be a wise, moral, and eco-friendly shopper.
- Refinery29: The dark secret behind your favourite makeup products
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Who doesn’t love to add a touch of sparkly glamour in their makeup to light up the whole look?
As much as we love the magic of makeup, how would you feel if you know the glittery and shimmery pigments in your makeup palettes, foundations, and even skincare products, are mined by starving children in India with a deadly cost?
Mica is one of the most essential and yet most controversial ingredients in cosmetic products. The majority of the world’s mica comes from India and is mined by children, who make less than a quarter a day. Even though it is illegal to use child labour in mining, their parents are paid too poorly for their labour and have no choice but to send their children to the mines. It is heartbreaking to hear Pooja Bhurla, an 11-year-old girl who has been mining for mica every day since she was eight to say “If we don’t pick mica, how will we put food on the table?”
- CBC News: How fast fashion adds to the world’s clothing waste problem
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Fast fashion retail stores are many people’s all-time-favourite places to shop. They offer fashionable, affordable, and disposable clothes that seem perfect for someone on a student budget but still want to update their wardrobes every season.
Starting in 2018, some major fast fashion retail companies have been promoting their recycling project that allows customers to get discounts every time they put used clothes in the recycle bins at the stores. In this video, CBC News deeply investigated where the clothes go and if it is possible to recycle those textiles. This documentary reveals the tip of the iceberg of the fast fashion industry and you may want to think twice before throwing tons of money on clothes you will only wear a few times.
- CBC News: Retail tricks: How stores make you spend more
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We all make impulsive purchases at grocery stores and knowing more will help us resist those impulses and help us save money. This documentary from CBC News shows how an industry of neuroscientists and behavioural psychologists help retailers boost business and make us buy stuff that we may not actually want or need.
Some retail strategies are happening in the store without you noticing them, such as the layout of the store, the size of the shopping baskets, the music playing in the store, and the design of the sales signs.. Bruce Chamber, a former advertising executive, says that if marketers can engage our emotions quickly enough and strongly enough, we can have made the purchase and left the store before our rational minds started working.
At the end of the video, CBC News also shared some useful tips from experts that can help you avoid buying more than you need.
- The Social Dilemma (Netflix)
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The Social Dilemma is a documentary on Netflix that examines how social media apps foster dependency and addiction as well as manipulate users to make impulsive purchases. It’s not news anymore in 2020 that social media apps are monitoring our activities, but this documentary gives an artistic presentation on how precise the manipulation can be in order to engage users and inspire purchases. Next time, if you see an ad for a product you have been wanting to buy pop up on an Instagram story, you will have a better understanding of what is happening behind the scenes.
I hope these four documentaries have given you some things to think about going into the gift-buying season. Being aware as a consumer is important and every little thing adds up. Happy gift shopping!