The psychology of sales and shopping: why you want to buy now

Do you ever feel an overwhelming desire to shop? If you do, you’re not alone – in 2025, Australians are spending more than ever before, with online sales alone up more than 2% despite growing cost of living pressures.  

Whether we’re confessed shopaholics or just casual spenders, it seems we all love to buy.  

But why is that? 

As psychologists and marketers know well, part of the reason might be sales psychology techniques.   

These days, you’d be hard pressed to find a brand that doesn’t use sales psychology to inform their marketing decisions.  

Deakin Assoc. Prof. of marketing Kerrie Bridson unpacks how marketers use the psychology of sales to understand what makes our buying brains tick and, in some cases, give us a nudge further down the sales funnel. 

What is sales psychology?  

We know that buying things makes us happy, which suggests that we consumers are already primed to purchase.  

In fact, research tells us that we get a little rush of dopamine when we add a special something to our shopping basket or hit that ‘buy now’ button.  

For product marketers, though, there’s more to the job than simply putting an item on display and waiting for shoppers to make themselves happy.  

There are plenty of factors at play; it’s all part of the psychology of sales. 

‘From a marketer’s lens, [sales psychology] refers to how we study consumer behaviour, the role of human emotions and how we process information and think as a means to illuminate how and why people buy products and services, particularly branded ones,’ says Bridson. 

How behavioural psychology informs sales strategies  

Anyone who’s ever watched a minute of reality TV will knows that human behaviour is complex and confusing.  

For retailers and marketers, understanding what makes people visit a shop or make a purchase is the holy grail – this knowledge can help marketers drive sales, boost loyalty and more.  

The insights garnered from exploring the sales psychology also helps businesses identifykey markets based on qualities like age, gender, location and lifestyle. These learnings can then be used to makesales strategies more attractive to the target audience. 

‘Marketers use these insights in a tailored way to influence consumer decision making,’ says Bridson. ‘It’s all about being able to better connect with consumers and ensure the offers made, how they are communicated to consumers and how consumers are engaged with it is relevant to them. Without such insights about behaviour, campaigns would be irrelevant to consumers as they won’t connect or appeal to them at all.’ 

Psychology of sales: techniques and tricks  

Exposés like Netflix documentary Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy often reference ‘tricks’ used in marketing to influence consumer behaviour. While behavioural psychology and sales are important to marketers, Bridson says the suggestion that they’re using ‘tricks’ isn’t entirely fair.  

‘Tricks are honestly not the norm at all and imply a magician’s sleight-of-hand approach,’ she says. ‘Marketing is premised on adding value and helping meet consumer needs and wants on their terms.’ 

This doesn’t mean there aren’t techniques at play, though. TV show The Gruen Transfer (now known just as ‘Gruen’) is named after the famous technique that involves building large shopping centres designed to distract and drive impulse purchases.   

While our instinct is to feel cynical about the sales psychology techniques being ‘used on us’, many of them can actually be very useful to shoppers – which is a big part of why they’re so effective. 

‘We don’t want to contribute to sales noise, but to be more meaningful and meet consumers on their terms in the best way,’ Bridson says. ‘Techniques can range from timing special offers strategically to using brand ambassadors that resonate with specific consumers.Sales psychology can even inform pricing strategies. The aim is to cut through all the busyness consumers face and make things easier.’ 

Unpacking psychological sales triggers  

It’s those core ideas – ease, convenience and cutting through the noise – that makes sales psychology effective. Many psychology of sales techniques hinge on providing value to consumers and making their lives easier – not tricking them into buying a bag of coffee they’ll never drink or shoes they won’t wear.  

For many decades, studies analysing the psychology of shopping have consistently found that convenience is an especially powerful sales trigger.  

‘Research in the last decades identified that households don’t always know what or how to cook,’ Bridson says. The response has been a campaign of convenience in supermarket marketing, focusing on providing recipes, bundling ingredients and making better use of in-store locations to streamline the shopping experience.  

‘Great examples are the rise of the Mexicasa (now known as Old El Paso) range, providing all the herbs and spices and creating a fantastic campaign in conjunction with the supermarkets and ‘Taco Tuesday’ emerged. This also relies on great product placement in-store to reduce the effort of finding logically co-located items. Great usage of gondola ends of grocery stores to group the items together saves busy shoppers time and energy.’ 

Even though convenience has long been a feature of brand marketing, this particular psychological sales trigger has evolved for the internet, too.  

‘As a lover of online grocery shopping, I am not the only one who makes use of the personalised recipe recommendations and automatic selection of the products added to the shopping basket,’ Bridson says. 

Using reverse psychology in sales  

In sales, reverse psychology is sometimes used as a way to combat an audience that is resistant to persuasion. While reverse psychology in sales makes some sense in principle, Bridson says it’s not all that common or useful these days. 

‘Reverse psychology is quite rare today and is premised on suggesting the opposite of what a business actually wants with the expectation that a consumer will react against the suggestion,’ she says. ‘It assumes consumers are weak and not empowered and that you could honestly convince someone to go against their own preferences and wants.’ 

Bridson says consumers these days are actually pretty psychologically strong, meaning this sales technique rarely features in modern marketing strategies.  

‘We are all savvier than ever as consumers, and we have built up resistance to direct influence or control over time.’ 

The psychology behind shopping addiction  

While consumers are often suggestible when it comes to shopping, some of us find it harder to resist the urge than others. The self-confessed shopaholic might just enjoy regular splurging, but the impulse to buy can become an addiction for others.  

‘Shopping addiction certainly exists and is also called compulsive buying disorder, and estimates vary on how widespread it is, averaging about 5% of the population,’ says Bridson.  

As Bridson has suggested, most consumers these days are strong and empowered to make up their own mind. For those with an addiction, though, there are some more sinister signs, like financial stress caused by shopping, hiding purchases and a loss of control.  

The psychology behind shopping addiction shows that the compulsion tends to affect people with other issues and can be a way of trying to cope, according to Bridson. 

‘Vulnerable consumers can fall into this addiction if they are seeking the psychological and physical high of immediate gratification, if they are responding to specific distress emotionally and seeking to cope with other life stresses, emotions or depression. Such vulnerable consumers can fall victim to the disorder.’ 

The psychology of sales and shopping: resisting the temptation   

Holding off on a purchase can be a good thing in some cases, and Bridson says there are some ways to resist the urge to buy – particularly for those with some addictive tendencies. 

‘To counter the disorder, we have seen a rise in consumers who set weekly budgets, avoid sales communications, use cash rather than tap-and-go cards, make a shopping list, etc.,’ Bridson says. ‘It’s all a means of managing such tendencies in practice as well as seeking professional support for the urge for immediate gratification.’ 

Despite the concerns around addiction and marketing ‘tricks’, though, most psychological sales techniques are designed to benefit and empower shoppers with convenience and simplicity.  

In other words, most of us are firmly in the driver’s seat when it comes to what we buy.  

After all, what is sales psychology for if not to provide a better shopping experience for all of us?