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I think there's two types of hoarding that are interesting in today's day and
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age first the physical hoarding but also the digital hoarding we have right think
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about how many photos we have or files we might have stored on Dropbox we're
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worried we're going to need them someday so we keep them around and so the storage we need to have gets larger and
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larger even though it's not physical storage welcome to the ripple effect the
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podcast that takes you on a journey through the minds of work faculty I'm your host Dan Looney and in each episode
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we'll be diving deep into the inspiration find the groundbreaking research that whon professors have
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conducted and exploring how their findings resonate with the world today well there are many things that we buy
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or we acquire that we love and hold on to for a long time even maybe after their usefulness has passed but then
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there are also instances where people will acquire something and they don't really use it yet for some reason they
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still hang on to it so we wanted to find out why that is the case Jonah Berger marketing professor at the Wharton
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School has done research into this and he joins us right now to talk about it Jonah interesting topic that that you've
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looked into what was it that kind of peak your interest in the first place you know I think we've all had this
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personal experience where we have something lying around our house that we don't use and in some cases it makes a
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lot of sense maybe it's uh something someone gave us that we wish we had a use for but we don't right um uh you
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know we thought we would play guitar someone nicely gave us a guitar and we don't end up using it or maybe it's a
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family heirloom right maybe it's our grandmother's China that we personally
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don't love but we don't have as fancy occasions or it reminds us of her so we
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keep around and those things make a sense but there's a third class of things that makes a little bit less
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sense maybe it's a a bottle of wine that wasn't that special to begin with maybe
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it's um an item that we got that wasn't that important us at the beginning but
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somehow we end up holding on to it and and never using it the the wine wasn't
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that special at the beginning but now it feels really special and we don't drink
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it or the the shirt we were saving it for that special occasion and it never really arose and now we never end up
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wearing it and so we wondered why might that be and could we understand uh consumer Behavior more broadly by
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understanding this particular situation so take us through how you actually did that because I I'd find that interesting
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just how you go about that process yeah you know I think there's often uh products uh that we buy that aren't that
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special to start with maybe it's a bottle of wine it's a kind of normal bottle of of wine or maybe it's a a
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shirt or a dress that's maybe a little nicer than what we would normally buy
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but not that that nice and these things start off as rather normal right rather sort of normal ordinary possessions but
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if an occasion comes around where we don't end up using it maybe because we felt it wasn't a perfectly good fit or
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maybe we just wanted to save it for something else what's interesting is now
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that thing that didn't start so special becomes a little bit more special we go
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well hold on if I didn't use it for that last occasion maybe it's worth saving
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for something a little bit better and so the next time comes around right we have
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an opportunity to use it but then we might be likely to save it again and suddenly we go through this specialness
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spiral where something that's started rather ordinary becomes a little bit more extraordinary we end up saving it
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for special occasions and not using it in ordinary ones and something that wasn't that special to begin with
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becomes a lot more special than we intended so this isn't just a kind of a normal emotional attachment to something
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is it you know certain things we start with an emotional attachment towards right so
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our grandmother's China might be something where we have a strong emotional attachment at the beginning
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and and that doesn't change what I think is neat here is how the items change
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through our process of non-consumption right it didn't start out that special
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yet by not using it and not using it and not using it and and not just ignoring it but almost consciously not using it
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right deciding is this the right occasion to wear that new pair of shoes maybe I'll hold off right I'll tell a
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personal story many years ago I was on the academic job market uh and I got a suit right for a big job interview as I
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uh as many people do when they're on the job market and I thought the suit was
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really special and I loved it and I wore it for the academic job market but then
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I didn't wear it soon after because I wanted to save it for something and then
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months went by and months went by and years went by and I was saving it and saving it and eventually this thing went
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out of style right and it wasn't because it was super special to begin with OR
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super meaningful to begin with it was more that I didn't use it and became more special and eventually it became so
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old that I didn't want to use it anymore and so I think a lot of times we end up
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with things around our home that didn't have meaning at the beginning but get it
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through this process of non-consumption how much then is does this to a degree explain maybe some of the elements of
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hoarding that we see out there I think it's certainly the case um you know it's
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very interesting uh in today's day and age the the way we think about hoarding
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you know um my my grandmother was a little bit of a hoarder herself and would keep things around because she
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thought someone would wear it or someone would use it and and in today's day and
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age in some ways we have a little less of that right in some ways we have digital items and so we have less
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physical hoarding but the same thing happens right we get a gift for the holidays it's not perfect for us but we
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keep it around we end up putting it in the closet it goes to the back of the closet things go in front of it and we
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end up not seeing it anymore and soon we get something similar we have something
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else that takes its place and so I think there's two types of hoarding that are
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interesting in today's day and age first the physical hoarding but also the digital hoarding we have right think
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about how many photos we have or files we might have stored on Dropbox we're
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worried we're going to need them someday so we keep them around and so the storage we need to have gets larger and
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larger even though it's not physical storage and so I'll throw in one for
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myself I mean thinking about all the photos that I have collected of my kids of them playing soccer or different
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events they've been in and I have multiples of each one of them I and I could probably go through my phone and
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eliminate probably at least half of the photos that I have on there but I don't do it and maybe for me part
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of that is an element of time and actually taking the time to do that but but notice the more things we have
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whether they are physical things or digital things the more time it takes to call those things and so the more
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daunting the task becomes right if if every time or every week or every month we went through our photos and you know
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got rid of the ones where we took a picture of our pocket or we took two of the kids at the soccer game that are
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identical if we called those photos the task wouldn't be so difficult because
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then every month we'd only have a month to deal with but if it goes month on
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month on month just like we have that attic room in our house or apartment where we store things that we don't need
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eventually becomes harder and harder to find things and harder to harder to call
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it and so we end up having more and more stuff so how much is the recognition of having these things a
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challenge or maybe people don't have enough of a recognition that they're
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actually doing some of these things you know I think it's important uh in some
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cases right and and not everyone has this problem all the time some some of uh the listeners here are probably
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saying what do you mean I get a bottle of wine I drink it right away or um you know I get a new shirt I wear it at the
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first possible occasion I think we have to be careful though once things that were not originally special start
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becoming uh overly special if you will um and it becomes useful to think about strategies to mitigate that R be saying
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hey I'm gonna wear this for New Year's or uh I'm gonna wear this for my
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birthday or I'm G to drink this bottle of wine the next time we go out to dinner setting a specific occasion where
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you decide that usage is appropriate helps us use these things and and move on on and the same thing can be true in
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our digital world as well in the end do you think there are reasons why people end up having these attachments and
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maybe don't even realize it you know emotional attachment isn't always bad
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right it's nice to have cherished photos uh of our family members or you know
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things that our kids made that we keep around the house even even though we don't necessarily need them it's it's
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nice to have those emotional attachments I think the challenge is when you have so many of those things that they get in
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the way of of our well-being our ability to find the things we do want um our ability to sort of overc consume and buy
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things we don't need and so in those situations it's important to figure out
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ways to mitigate it and to increase our happiness as a result so then if we have
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this as a component of our digital lives right now how much then do you think this potentially continues on and
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enhances as we move down the road because we are more and more connected to our digital selves every day whether
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it be our phones our computers I mean we're doing this interview on Zoom it's
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just become a massive part of our lives and certainly right I mean Technologies are tools um and those tools can be very
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helpful those tools can make that things easier they can save us time they can help us uh work well on vacation and get
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something done if we need to but they can also be detrimental right they can interrupt Us in ways we might not want
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they can uh lead us to accumulate uh digital files that we don't necessarily
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need and so um I think just like our offline tools we need to manage our online tools as well and I guess also we
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talk a lot about the elements of how different they are from generation to generation certainly I guess it's going
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to be very much interesting to watch how this digital component plays in with younger Generations right now certainly
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I mean I think about this a lot when I think about a physical office right you know you used to go into someone's
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physical office and they had shelves and shelves of physical books and now many people have gotten rid of those books
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academics used to have journals most people don't get physical journals anymore and so what is an office space
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for do people's need as large offices what do you put in them um how do you think about how they represent yourself
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there's a a lot of interesting transitions are being made and and certainly age plays a role right the the
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younger you are when you've been introduced to these Technologies the less lik you maybe to have physical
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things around and the more comfortable you may be with a a digital only world so this sounds like it's it's a little
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bit of a ever evolving type of research that you're doing because of all the
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Dynamics at play but what do you think are the takeaways at least now from what you you you delved into in this topic
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you know I I think we need to think about managing our possessions whether they are physical or or digital um I
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think it's as we talked about earlier it's important to have meaning in our
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lives and it's important to be emotionally attached to things in our lives um that said sometimes that can
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become overwhelming um ordinary items can become perceived Treasures even when they're not and we can imbue them with
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so much meaning that we fill our spaces with things we're never using and so if
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we find ourselves in in an overly cluttered uh living in an overly cluttered space whether in our physical
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World our Digital World understanding why we may have ended up there and figuring out how to manage it becomes
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key Jonah great to talk to you as always thanks very much thanks so much for having me you got a Jonah burer
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marketing Professor here at the Wharton School thank you for listening to the ripple effect we hope you found this
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episode informative and engaging don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review so that we can continue to bring
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you the best Insight from the warden School