Hypnotic retail marketing in Christmas season

On Christmas, I posted a piece titled "With Super Saiyan spirit, make everyday Christmas" on our sister website HotNonPorn.com. The post is about how through conscious and sustained effort, Christmas need not be a single-day or seasonal retail marketing event, but a positive, year-round ideal and practice. I also add that establishing positive economics to sustain the vibrations needed to resist inner and outer threats and overturn the incumbent predicament requires a "Super Saiyan" fortitude - much like how Goku fought and defeated Frieza in Dragon Ball Z.

To kick off this blog, allow me to briefly introduce how retailers entice customers with bright lights, colors, designs, and animation to shop at their stores. I visited Myeongdong in Seoul, South Korea yesterday evening to observe the scene around Shinsegae Department Store and Lotte Department Store, two of South Korea's largest retail brands, and take photos of their façades.

1. Shinsegae Department Store (Main Branch)
Myeongdong, Seoul, South Korea

The Christmas lights at the Shinsegae Department Store Main Branch are certainly impressive. Through a huge screen covering its entire façade and glittering shades of red, green, blue, and gold, the store exudes what it calls "Magical Winter Fantasy" and "Dreaming of Christmas" quite effectively. The presentation as a whole has an enchanting quality to it and seems to have been designed to captivate and guide shoppers to enter the store through the main entrance.

2. Lotte Department Store (Main Branch)
Myeongdong, Seoul, South Korea

Not as grand as Shinsegae's but nevertheless, Lotte's Christmas lights are stunning in their own right, especially in person. While I personally didn't see Christmas lights illuminating the façade of Lotte Young Plaza next door - possibly because the store had already closed by the time I got there - it does have a striking holiday presentation according to videos on YouTube. Moreover, Lotte Hotel Seoul around the corner from Lotte Department Store has intricate Christmas lights as well. (From my understanding, Lotte Department Store, Avenuel, Lotte Young Plaza, Lotte Hotel Seoul, which are located next to each other, form the "Lotte Town" complex.)

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Whether it's Shinsegae or Lotte, the strategy appears the same: Hypnotize shoppers and tourists with a grand display of lights, colors, designs, and animation. Bring them in, and entice them to part with their hard-earned money! The bedazzlement looks like it could sway someone on the fence (e.g. tourists to the general area) to shop or convince shoppers to spend more money than originally intended. It was telling how tourists were getting their photos taken in front of these Christmas lights even after business had ended for the day.

Now, I'm not saying these big retailers are robbing anyone at gunpoint. I'm not even saying you couldn't catch a movie or get dinner at a shopping establishment. You may even need to buy some goods every now and then. However, it is important to understand the hypnotic marketing mechanism behind retail shopping, so you can stick to making purchases that are useful for you.

I seriously doubt any of these retailers care about the spirit and ideals of Christmas. Instead of keeping and practicing a Christmas-like spirit year-round, they are just using Christmas to propel their money grab. When the holiday season is over, they completely forget about Christmas until the next year's holiday money grab.

Remember that.

Happy New Year.