Decoding the New Consumer Mind: How and Why We Shop and Buy

Introduction

Janine is a thirty-five-year-old high school teacher from Atlanta, and she just purchased a pair of jeans that she's unlikely to wear. If Janine's pattern holds true, they'll sit on her “jeans shelf” for a few months until they assume their final resting place: a box under her bed along with another pair of jeans, black dress slacks, a floral bustier, and a stretchy black blazer—all unworn and all still too small for Janine. A year from now they'll be resurrected and, along with the other unworn goodies, sold on eBay for a fraction of what Janine paid.

Janine isn't the first woman to buy something for a future weight—that's been a constant throughout the history of modern shopping. What's different is nearly everything about why ...