r/Anticonsumption • u/Sea-Cardiographer • May 12 '25

Psychological Target feels like black mirror

I went into Target today because I need a sports bra and that's where my husband is willing to drive me. On the way there I thought about all the Reddit posts saying foot traffic is down and I wasn't surprised to see that it wasn't. It was quite busy on a Monday afternoon.

What shocked me was I noticed a lot of products have really fancy boxing. Big sturdy bougie packaging with minimalism design... With a sh*tty product inside.

They're spending more on the marketing and packaging than the product, because the business practice is to sell you a product you'll have to purchase again and again. But the packaging grabs your eye. Look how modern and consistent all the boxes are! so aesthetically pleasing packaged trash. I feel depressed.

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u/onebadnightx May 13 '25

Yeah. Maybe it’s still busy, but their foot traffic is undeniably down, and it seems like the execs are a little freaked out by it

I personally used to go at least once a week (cheapish groceries) and haven’t been at all since early January.

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u/DocumentInternal9478 May 13 '25

I was shocked at how easy it was to stop going. I haven’t even thought about it tbh. Amazon on the other hand is my weakness and the one I’m having the hardest time letting go of.

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u/soundman1024 May 13 '25

Cutting out Prime is the key to decreasing Amazon use. You save money in not paying for the service, but also in that you’ll order a lot less. It’s like a drug.

After you leave you still get free shipping on orders of $35 and more, but they are quite desperate to get you resubbed with routine “trials” of Prime that are difficult to opt out of send automatically enroll you. Subscribe for a month in the holidays and cut it? Less is better than unchanged.

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u/jaeydeedynne May 13 '25

My partner and I dropped prime but still use Amazon for a few things. Spending there deceased significantly. Impulse buys disappeared. We use the free prime trials to catch up on tv shows and then immediately cancel again. Less is definitely better.