The human mind works in such a mysterious way. Sometimes we do things that we don’t even realise we are doing. Here’s where today’s topic comes into play. Most of you haven’t heard about the Diderot Effect, if you have then this article is to make you think if you have fallen into the trap of the Effect.

You may be wondering what the Diderot Effect is all about. The Diderot Effect is a two-part phenomenon. It is based on two assumptions about our shopping habits. Those ideas are:

• Goods purchased by customers become part of their identity and tend to complement one another. In  other words, you get addicted to the new lifestyle and can’t function well without it.
• The introduction of a new item which deviates from that identity can cause a spiral of consumption in an attempt to forge a new cohesive whole.

Story time: Birth of the Diderot Effect

Let’s take a history lesson together to see how this effect came into the world.

Dennis Diderot lived most of his life as a poor man, regardless of being the co-founder of the encyclopaedia. You would think that someone so important in the world today would have been swimming in money however he was not. Here’s where it gets interesting, a Russian empress heard about Diderot’s situation and offered to buy his library for a 1,000 British pounds. A 1,000 British pounds back then is worth roughly 50,000 US dollars in 2015.

Diderot was not used to seeing that much of money so he decided to buy new clothes. He realised that the new clothes do not match with the rest of the house. So, he decided to buy new things for his house.

However, he spent so much money that he was back in debt but he was addicted to the lavish lifestyle.

This is basically what the Diderot Effect is. When you get something new, you would want to get more stuff just because of the recent purchase. For example, when you buy new car; you would get other car accessories to cater to the new car; such as new car mats, air fresheners. Do you need it? No, but it’s always a good feeling when you get new stuff to match the initial purchase. It feels more like a fresh start rather than blindly purchasing accessories.

Prevention!

We all have been guilty of this. I certainly have been very guilty of this. I bought an iPhone 8plus just over a year ago and I keep on buying accessories for it. Do I need it? Absolutely not. But I have a ton of cases for it and there’s literally no reason or point of having that many cases but I still do. That’s the Diderot effect! Interesting, right?

How do you prevent this from happening? You can try the buy 1, give 1 method. This means whenever you buy something, you would have to give something that you own away. In other words, one hand is bringing in something and the other hand is pushing out something. Another method is renting products. This method would help you save so much money!

Renting products is a create way to prevent the Diderot Effect from happening. It would prevent the shame of spending a lot of money on additional products. You can spend less than a fraction of it and still have the satisfaction of having those products for a couple of days. Why not make it permanent? Well because after a couple of days, you would realise that you do not need the additional accessories.

RentSmart Asia is an online platform which allows you to rent out different types of products at a fraction of the purchasing price! Rm4,000 cameras seem extremely expensive, right? What if I told you that you can rent it out for RM180.00 per day. It’s hard to believe but it’s true. RentSmart Asia is the only platform that offers those kind of deals! Head over to our website to check out more deals. Click here to find out more.