(CNN) Seventeen-year-old Aria Liu regularly posts shopping videos to her YouTube channel, which has 300,000 subscribers, live-streaming herself on her laptop as she buys shopping carts full of clothes and makeup, worth up to $1,000.
“I’ve been doing a lot more shopping online,” she told CNN. “I don’t know why, but when you’re shopping online, money just doesn’t feel real.”
Liu is not alone: Bulk shopping has been around for years, if not decades, but experts say the ubiquity of social media feeds, powerful product bundles that appear as algorithmically enhanced recommendations, buy now, pay later programs and a constant stream of sales have made buying large amounts of clothes, beauty products and other items all at once even more common.
This isn’t just a trend among online influencers: The average number of items per transaction in consumer goods categories is at its highest in the past 12 months, averaging nearly 11 products per order, according to digital marketing platform Dynamic Yield. That’s even stronger than sales during last December’s holiday shopping season. The average value of digital carts is also at its highest in the past 12 months, up $50 from June to $206 per order, Dynamic Yield reported.
While not everyone may be exhausted from shopping, consumer spending has remained surprisingly strong even as the economy shows signs of stress: The Commerce Department reported that retail spending rose 1% in July, much more than economists expected, after a revised 0.2% decline in June.
Say goodbye to checkout lines
One factor driving the increase in purchases may be that buy now, pay later (BNPL) services such as Klarna and Afterpay are becoming increasingly mainstream, making not having immediate cash a barrier to making a purchase.
“People who are more materialistic and impulsive when it comes to purchasing are more likely to be BNPL customers,” said Philippa Ward, professor of marketing at the University of Gloucestershire, adding that this type of short-term lending can increase impulse buying tendencies.
But economists and consumer advocacy groups have raised concerns about BNPL. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York earlier this year found that people with financial difficulties, such as those with credit scores below 620, were more than three times more likely to use BNPL multiple times a year than their financially stable peers.
Influencers and influencers
Shopping traffic can generate big money for influencers and social platforms, and it can also have a huge impact on consumer behavior. These platforms are beginning to make online purchasing seamless, turning a passive pastime into a potentially expensive habit. This is cause for concern for those who can least afford it.
Katie Phan has a loyal following of more than 5 million on TikTok, which she launched in 2016, and her “Get Ready With Me” videos, in which viewers follow her through her makeup routine, have garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
Outside of TikTok, her fans can buy the products featured in her videos on ShopMy, a platform launched in 2020 that content creators use to promote their products. These tools also help her promote her purchases more prominently than ever before, in turn increasing social pressure for others to join in.
But social media platforms themselves are also trying to get into the retail world, evolving from spaces where users can find inspiration for items to add to their wishlist to spaces where they can buy those items without ever leaving the site.
The company said in an email to CNN that people watched more than 30 billion hours of shopping-related content on YouTube last year alone, and that in 2023, it plans to maximize its position in the retail space by launching YouTube Shopping, which allows content creators to tag products from brands they feature in their videos and earn commission on any sales.
TikTok similarly launched its own shopping platform, “TikTok Shop,” in 2023, which has grown to include more than 500,000 merchants in the U.S., including brands such as L’Oreal and Elf Cosmetics, according to people familiar with the matter.
But influencers are not immune to the influence of social media, Fan said.
“I feel like the beauty industry has really exploded on TikTok recently, and there are so many new products out there that it’s easy to get influenced,” she says. “When I see something trending on TikTok, I’m like, ‘Wow, I want that too.'”
The company reported that hashtags like “#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt” helped account for 15% of product discoveries in 2022.
Two in three Americans believe social media encourages excessive spending, according to a June survey by WalletHub. And beyond social media feeds, personalized recommendations directly from retailers’ websites are also an effective tool to encourage shoppers to add more items to their digital carts.
“The most powerful tools that online retailers have compared to offline (retailers) are algorithms, data processing tools and information about the customer,” said Matthias Lehner, a researcher at the Centre for Retail Research at Lund University in Lund, Sweden.
Moreover, as more companies continue to invest in artificial intelligence technologies, algorithms aimed at personalizing users’ shopping experiences are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
For example, Amazon introduced an AI-powered feature earlier this year to help customers shop for clothes by recording their past purchases and size preferences to find the best-fitting outfits.
“While physical store associates can personalize the customer experience, it may not be long before AI-powered digital assistants can sell and recommend products,” Lehner said.
Over-(and Under-)Consumption
But this shopping boom is competing with another online trend: the “under-consumer core,” a counter-movement by “de-influencers” who oppose purchasing products, which has rapidly gained momentum on social media as an antithesis to a seemingly relentless culture of buying.
But de-influence is more than just a hashtag or a fad, according to Katrina Kasperich, chief marketing officer at Remake, a nonprofit focused on human rights and climate justice in the clothing industry.
There is also a growing body of research questioning whether social media is particularly dangerous for younger users. While there is still much to be learned, this study highlights how much the way we use the internet and interact online has changed in the space of a generation.
Additionally, according to Remake’s 2024 Fashion Accountability Report, the fashion industry is estimated to be responsible for 2-4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with more and more people sounding the alarm about the dangers of overconsumption.
“This is a call for us as humans to use our resources thoughtfully to maximize value from the products we already own before succumbing to the temptation to acquire the next big thing,” Kasperich said.
CNN Wire
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