What Mother's Day Guilt Teaches Us About Consumer Psychology

Consumer Psychology And Mother’s Day Guilt / Photo by Tanaphong Toochinda via Unsplash

Some would argue being a mother is the hardest job in the world. 

“Mom” can be synonymous with teacher, care-taker, mentor, manager, and even best friend. We have all fallen victim to taking our mothers for granted, be it through spending the majority of our time in high school rushing through dinner to meet with our friends, not replying to her essay-long messages about the latest hometown gossip, or just simply not calling her back. 

We spend days going about our own business, focusing on ourselves, our dreams, our passions. And then there’s Mother’s day. 

Mother’s Day is the one day a year to finally spoil our moms. Modern consumerism provides a helping hand, highlighting a few key items such as flowers, cards, perfumes, bags, etc.  The list of presents to shower your mother with are endless. But it was not always this way. What’s the history of Mother’s Day, and how does it impact our consumer psychology? One word: guilt. 

Consumerism and The History of Mother’s Day

Before we get to that, we first need to understand the history. Mother’s Day began in 1908 by Anna Jarvis following the death of her mom as a way to honor the sacrifices she made for her children. It didn’t take much time for floral and greeting-card companies to leverage the emotional impact of the holiday and turn it into a money-making machine.

Anna attempted to stop people from falling for their marketing schemes  through press releases and petitions, calling these companies “charlatans, bandits, pirates,  racketeers, kidnappers, and termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest,  noblest and purest movements and celebrations." 

Due to the constant association between Mother’s day, flowers and gift cards, this aspect of gift-gifting has been directly associated with honoring our mothers. The five love languages outlined by Gary Chapman argue that everyone shows and receives love differently.

Out of the five love languages, only one of them is “receiving gifts”. Mothers who prefer to show and receive love through quality time, physical touch, affirmations, and so forth, would be perfectly fine not receiving a gift on Mother’s day. 

The Consumer Psychology of Guilt

So why do we, as consumers, fall victim to the tactics of these companies? Why is it that we rush to buy the most colorful bouquet of flowers, scroll hours through Amazon to find the perfect present, or go through numerous gift cards to find the one that matches exactly how we feel? This is what we call the consumer psychology of guilt. 

Marketers are highly aware of the guilt they can elicit through their Mother’s day campaigns by simply mentioning our mother’s efforts which are often taken for granted. Samsung’s famous “Texts from Mom” campaign does precisely this, featuring typically irritating stereotypical mom texts such as “How do I hashtag your brother?” or “I gave my new podiatrist your phone number. Very Handsome”. It ends with a woman clicking on the call button,  guilting viewers into calling their mothers.

The motivational aspect relies on the fact that when one feels guilty, one feels the urge to make some form of reparation. A typical viewer of the “Texts from Mom campaign” would  think to themselves, “When was the last time I called mom?”, “What can I do to make up for this?” as they fall into a cycle of guilt that the ad aimed for in the first place. The solution that most of us arrive at is spoiling our mothers one day a year. Mother’s day has become companies’ insidious request to purchase presents to honor your mother. 

Consumer guilt is a feeling that arises from your awareness of having failed to achieve personal or social moral standards. As you probably already know, the sense of guilt is not exactly an enjoyable experience; it is an emotion that individuals attempt to stir away from,  and when it arises, they leap towards avoidance techniques to tune away from this unsettling feeling. 

Mother’s Day And Guilt of Social Media

Mother’s day is celebrated by everyone around you, which elicits pressure to comply with these social standards. Your Instagram feed is bursting with photos of your friend’s mom smothered with gifts and ads that tell you, “Those sunglasses she didn’t buy for herself when she gave you the little pony are back into fashion” (Yes, this is an actual ad by Alto Rosario Shopping),  naturally pushes you into a loop of guilt, and leads you to do the one thing that would make it go away: buying those flowers. 

We all want to be great children, and our abstinence from the holiday would go against our self-image. Our compliance to this holiday by buying those colorful flowers, the sweet perfume, and witty gift cards restores our self-esteem as a child, we regain our self-image,  and we can finally go about our day without feeling as though we could have done more. 

With Mother’s day coming up this May, try to challenge your own consumer psychology.  Are you buying these flowers for your mother because she wants them? I mean, does your mom even like flowers? Or are you buying these flowers to make the guilt go away? 

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