In last week’s feature article, I wrote:

I also said that I’d finish up my thoughts on the subject this week. However, by coincidence, the day after I published that article, I left on a long weekend vacation for Las Vegas, and that leads to a bit of an interlude.

With temperatures hovering around 110˚F (43˚C), and with no shortage of air conditioned luxury retail venues—virtually every household name maison has at least two or three boutiques in Las Vegas—I ended up spending a good deal of time shopping, or at least window browsing.

I wasn’t worried about spending foolishly. After all, not only do I write a newsletter on the luxury business, including the psychology of luxury, but I had just written an article on “wanting beautiful things without mistaking them for happiness”. But knowing the psychology of luxury isn’t the same as being immune to it.

How did it all work out? Not as easily as I might have imagined. As a Prussian general put it:

Or as someone of our era put it more vividly:

I thought I was prepared, and I was. And in the end, I made what I believe were rational decisions. But luxury maisons are good at what they do. It’s not a 350 € billion industry for nothing.

My experiences at four Las Vegas boutiques—two fashion, two watch—capture how things went.

None of the four boutiques tried the same approach. Looking back, each appealed to a different part of the mind.

I visited a French fashion boutique, where I asked to see a three-season scarf in which I was interested and decided I liked it. While the salesperson was off looking for a different item, I visited the corporate website, looked up the net price after VAT refund in Europe, and thought, “I can wait”.

I visited an Italian men’s fashion boutique and was quoted a price on a pair of dress sneakers the factory could customize for me. I decided the price was within the bounds of reason—if just barely—but then thought, “I can wait”.

I visited a boutique of a Swiss watch manufacture on which I’ve had my eye and asked after a model in which I might someday be interested. Let’s say… a tale was spun:

Salesperson: “You do know it’s a limited edition, right? And they only made 250?”

Me: “Yes, I know that’s the yearly allocation they make.”

At this point, the salesperson shot me a look as if to say, ‘You think you know my business, but you don’t. Oh, am I about to educate you.’

Salesperson: “There was a big meeting at Watches and Wonders in Geneva this year. And corporate said they weren’t making any more of this watch. We begged them. We told them that people love this watch. And finally they said, ‘Okay, we’ll make another 150, but that’s it.’ So if you want it, the only way to get it is to put down a deposit now and we’ll get you on the list.”

Me: “I appreciate that, but I like to do my research and wait until I know I’m ready, especially for something like this.”

Salesperson: “In my experience, people who say that often miss out on what they want.”

You might already have guessed what happened next: I visited the corporate website, looked up the model, and found it readily available for sale direct from headquarters. There it was, ready to add to my shopping cart and check out. I resolved it would be a while before I gave that manufacture another chance, if ever again.

Finally, I visited a boutique of a favorite Swiss watch manufacture of mine—just to look, you know. The salesperson—who was excellent, by the way—brought out the exact watch in which I was interested. I wasn’t ready to buy; I had a plan for when I wanted to buy it and I was sticking to that. So far, so good.

But then the salesperson read the person with me—again, they were excellent at their job—and brought out a watch that seemed designed just for them. I mean, it was as if it was the dream watch they never knew they wanted but suddenly did. And the model they brought out was being discontinued. I discreetly looked it up on the corporate website, and sure enough, it wasn’t available—so the story was confirmed, at least to some degree. We could buy both watches at once. And if we did, they’d throw in some extras to sweeten the deal.

Did I pull the trigger? No. But here’s the thing: I considered it. I mean, I seriously considered it. I exchanged information with the salesperson and legitimately thought there was a chance I’d come back to buy that weekend. I considered it overnight and into the next day until at last I looped back to my original plan, which didn’t involve more than one watch, and even then not until later in the year. (That said, I liked the salesperson so much that if I buy the watch here in the US, I’d probably buy it from them—so well done.)

But I shouldn’t have even considered the idea to begin with. I had a plan and I knew that. What I wasn’t prepared for was for the salesperson to bring out something so unexpected and desirable, and then to cleverly link it to the item I already knew I wanted.

Something became obvious to me over the course of the weekend. I had spent an entire article explaining how to recognize the psychology of luxury, and I thought that knowledge would make me largely immune to it. It didn’t. Knowing what was happening turned out to be very different from knowing what to do about it. In other words:

Knowing the psychology of luxury isn’t the same as being immune to it.

That, I think, is where Buddhism becomes genuinely interesting. Buddhism doesn’t merely tell us to be aware of our craving; it offers practices for examining it while it’s happening.

That’s where we’ll go next.

Have you ever walked into a store convinced you were “just looking”, only to find yourself seriously considering a purchase? What changed?

Have you ever recognized a sales technique while it was happening, but still found yourself persuaded by it?