A couple of weeks ago I went to a fairly upmarket clothes shop on Jermyn Street to buy a navy polo shirt. The assistant was knowledgable and helpful. The changing rooms were cosy and thoughtfully designed. I tried the polo in two sizes, got an opinion from the assistant, and chose the smaller size. I asked about shrinkage and got an answer that was based on years of hearing about customers' washing woes. I paid. I declined to give them my email address. I left.
This was a wonderful, human shopping experience. And it felt completely flat.
About a year ago I started to put a bit more thought and effort into what I wear. Having worked in a menswear store after University, over the years my personal style had sunk to the lowest denominator of jeans, t-shirt, sneakers. But the barrier I've always felt to dressing better is the cost of good clothes.
Enter Vinted.
Vinted is a second-hand marketplace. Back then, just clothes. Now, all sorts of things people want to get rid of. Vinted promised to help me rebuild my wardrobe at a fraction of the usual cost.
It's very straightforward. If you've never used it, it works like this. Search for something. Find it. Either buy it or make the seller an offer and haggle. Wait a few days. Open up the package and see how closely the item matches the photos and the description.
But buried underneath that simple customer journey are enough moments of chance, surprise, and reward to flood your brain with dopamine and other chemicals, to keep you coming back for more, and to dull every other shopping experience.
The search: jolts you when you find the exact right thing; the saved searches that let you know when a new match is listed.
The haggle: the gamble of making a cheeky offer, trying to squeeze an even cheaper price while balancing the low-level fear that someone else will buy it while you dilly-dally. And if you don't buy it, it might never come up for sale again. The dopamine of anticipation is joined by cortisol and adrenaline.
The acceptance: another hit of dopamine when your offer gets accepted and you can hit the buy button.
The wait: yet more dopamine as you wait for the seller to package it up and get it in the post. They've got five days to send it off, but when will they?! Will they do it at all? (Delivery isn't next day either, and that adds to it.)
The reveal: You don't want to get your hopes up, so you expect the item not to be as good as described. So then more dopamine is triggered when it turns out that the item really is in good condition and you know you scored yourself a bargain.
Other experiences have some of these elements – waiting til the last minute of an eBay auction to put your auto bid in, those few seconds between the auction ending and finding out whether you've won – but none feature as many elements as the Vinted experience. There are no seven-day auctions here. The cycle happens as quickly as a seller responds; another element of chance to keep that dopamine flowing.
Whether this experience was designed or is an emergent property of a secondhand marketplace, it's hard to argue that it isn't playing a role in Vinted's popularity. And r/shoppingaddiction is littered with stories of people who spend more than they would like.
One user says, "This is my only real vice now. The low price, and quick turn over is very FOMO inducing. It combines elements of gambling too as well as endless scroll. Too many elements! I actually am pretty good at it unfortunately." Notice the last bit there is referring to mastery and progression. The ability to get good at Vinted makes it more addictive, and helps people rationalise it.
"Completely understand why people get so attached to the app. It's cheap, doing a good thing for the environment as second hand, easier to scroll and buy than leave the house etc. The dopamine hit is unmatched." says another Reddit user, revealing the truth that knowing the psychology doesn't immunise you against its effects.
Like social media addiction, deleting the app is the only way for many to combat their compulsive shopping: "i think the solution would be to delete the app but i love it toooo much it is kind of a relaxing hobby for me but turned out to be higly [sic] self sabotaging at this point."
By sales, Vinted is now the third biggest fashion retailer in the UK. By sales volume, it is the biggest clothing retailer in France. Just as app developers looked to Meta and copied their engagement hooks, fashion retailers (those ones whose customers complain their experiences are dull) will look at Vinted's rise and ask what they can copy to compete. Dopamine culture came for the way we consume media, and now it's coming for the way we consume goods.