Canadian Marketing Blog

The Business of Clutter

Spending money is now, strangely, its own form of entertainment. We have always bought things we don’t need. But the consequences are having a substantial emotional impact on consumer behaviour and their shopping habits. Consumers are psychologically affected by their clutter, becoming anxious, while others suffer guilt and embarrassment.

A recent Australian survey found that 84 per cent of consumers bought things in order to deal with the excessive amount of things they have bought. 20 per cent said they feel anxious, guilty or depressed about the clutter in their homes. The findings confirm insights identified in a home improvement survey by Arcus. 88 per cent of homes have at least one cluttered room, and the average home has three or more cluttered rooms. The spare room is the most cluttered area in the home, followed by cupboards, the garage and bedrooms. Not surprisingly, people living in detached houses had more clutter than people living in townhouses or apartments, and people with kids in the home tend to have more clutter than those without.

Influencers
Women are much more concerned about clutter than men: almost half of the women surveyed said they were anxious, depressed or worried about the clutter in their home, while a third said they were embarrassed by it. Indeed, fully 59 per cent of women said there was a room in the house that they don’t like visitors to see because of the clutter. So what’s driving the business of clutter? It isn’t surprising that emotions have a big influence on decisions taken to deal with clutter. Consumers struggle between the need to satisfy an emotional need to acquire things and the aftermath of having to deal with clutter in homes.

Impulse buys
Impulse buys have a significant impact on clutter. Products such as clothes, books, electronics etc. make it to the top of list. The average Canadian household wastes $1,300 a year on items that are purchased but never used. This equates to $19.5 billion across the nation – or more than the federal government spents on universities and roads over the same period. “Bargain” shopping has also contributed to the trend. For example, high income groups are the fastest growing consumer segment for Dollar Stores. As retailers such as Costco make bargain hunting trendy, dollar stores have increasingly become frequented by upper-income households along with their main consumer segment of low to middle-income families. In fact, store growth within the dollar store channel is unparalleled by any other retailer. Top dollar store chains, including Dollar General, Family Dollar, Dollarama and 99 Cents Only, have added more than 5,900 new North American outlets since 2001. The phenomenon of value-based shopping and commoditization of categories has accelerated this trend. Consumers want to know they are buying value when they shop. So they end up buying more products at lower prices than is needed. It validates an emotional need for “self actualization”. Maslow explicitly defines self-actualization to be “the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for the individual to become actualized in what he is potentially”.

Implications
These insights have significant implications for the business of clutter. In 2007, Canada’s home improvement retailers moved almost $37 billion in hardware, building materials, paint and decor, and other home products. Most of these transactions occurred at 8,923 major retail outlets.

Arcus estimates at least 10% ($3.7 billion) of the Canadian home improvement segment is linked to organization and storage. Companies like Rubbermaid (sales: $6.2 billion), have their entire business dedicated to storage. There are over fifteen business sectors that benefit from the trend of increased clutter. Some examples include home improvement, construction, organization services, storage companies, junk collectors. Junk collectors have grown rapidly over the past decade. One of them made it to the top of the Profit 100 list of fastest growing companies in Canada. Companies that focus on the storage and organization business are likely to grow rapidly as boomers downsize and more consumers start to address problems with clutter.

Reasons Why We Can't Escape Clutter

There is no doubt that value-based shopping is contributing to clutter. Dollarama’s and Costco’s are popping up all over the place, encouraging people to bargain shop and buy more at lower prices. But what about the impact of marketing? Heavy advertising and clever sales promotion techniques have the power to convince us to buy products we don’t necessarily need. All of a sudden we need to buy something just because everyone else has it or because we always see it being advertised on television.

The perfect example of this is the Tickle Me Elmo phenomenon that swept the world few years ago. Parents were buying these dolls for their children at an alarming rate and stores couldn’t even keep them in stock because they were so popular. This toy’s success was definitely the result of clever marketing. A consumer frenzy developed around a product and it became the next “must have” possession for children all over the world.

The more “must have” items we buy the more clutter we will accumulate over the years. And because these products were so popular at one point we have trouble throwing them away, and so, the vicious cycle of clutter continues.

In addition to bargain shopping and clever marketing campaigns, the Western mentality of individualism and always wanting more contributes to clutter. We sometimes believe that buying things will make us happy and are often never satisfied with what we have. This, in turn, leads to the purchasing of more and more goods and the accumulating of clutter.

These are all factors “driving the business of clutter.” If we want a clutter and stress-free world, we need to stop buying commodities to make us happy and realize the true sources of happiness such as relationships with family and friends.