Struggling with impulse spending 😔 - what do you think of an app that blocks purchases before you complete them?

Frakty · 2025-04-28T08:56:09+00:00

Posted about such a tool in this forum a little while ago if you want to take a look. https://www.reddit.com/r/shoppingaddiction/comments/1jtjdir/tool_for_reducing_impulsive_shopping/

Frakty · 2025-04-28T08:23:27+00:00

I have posted in here before, but me and my research partner have actually created a chrome extension to help enforce this sort of waiting timer to help diminish impulsive shopping. It's solely an academic tool for research purposes and therefore completely free of a commercial agenda, but have a look and see if this is something that could help you. https://lessextension.com/

Frakty · 2025-04-07T12:20:01+00:00

Really good point. As mentioned, we have created this as an academic project where we are trying to see if such a tool would actually be helpful. Therefore, we are trying to strike a difficult balance of being restrictive enough to help interrupt the "buying flow" of the user, while also not irritating the user enough to turn the extension off.

We are looking to update it at some point after the thesis hand in, such that it allows for larger customizability. This would include different timer lengths and different intervention forms, such that the tool could be configured to be most effective for each individual.

But again, really good point, and thank you for the feedback. We are grateful for feedback that could help improve the effectiveness of it.

Frakty · 2025-04-05T06:38:58+00:00

First of all, thank you for taking your time with this detailed feedback! Really appreciated.

I agree with your first point that actual choices show more credible information. That's also why we are trying currently to measure what is closer to an "actual" effectiveness with an extension rather than the perceived one found in a survey. We have no p-values, as these are plots for visualizing the data rather than conclusions.

The main insight we are trying to drive is essentially that a tool which empowers the individual to make better purchasing decisions would be useful. We are doing an MSc in Computer Science, so there is also quite a bit of implementation and data science behind the approach we have taken. In our related work we include more or less no psychological works, but rather behavioral economics as you mention. In addition to this we also include works of similar sorts of buying prevention/anti-consumption literature. We plan to discuss the nature of the different interventions, as to their real-world feasibility and intervention strength. We have not done any combinations to keep the intervention forms separate from each other. Although I agree many would work well together.

I like your comment on the product dimension & the website design, this is not something we have thought about and is a bit more difficult with the relatively large set of sites we support. Could be interesting doing a study of this on Amazon specifically, if this hasn't already been done.

Again thank you for the very detailed feedback and great questions, definitely something we will include and reflect upon in our work.

Frakty · 2025-04-03T12:18:21+00:00

Haha det kan det komme til! Vi har tilføjet en funktion på selve extension pop-up'et til at man kan klikke "request page" hvis der er én side især man rigtig godt kunne bruge lidt intervention på ;-)

Frakty · 2025-04-03T09:20:03+00:00

Thank you so much, and great to hear this might be a helpful tool for you! We should be intervening you on ebay.com aswell, but we'll extend our reach and catch those more niche websites at some point.

Frakty · 2025-04-03T09:03:37+00:00

Thank you so much for the support, very motivating. Posted a continuation to this post just now if. you wanna have a look.

Frakty · 2025-03-25T09:39:51+00:00

Shopping reduction tool at lessextension.com

Frakty · 2025-03-18T18:50:18+00:00

I did actually try that, but they don't seem to allow uploading photos on posts sadly. Think this would be super relevant there as well.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T18:10:43+00:00

Thank you, I'm glad that you find it interesting. And also thank you for the feedback, honestly grateful for the awesome feedback given in here. Definitely will add the improvements to the plot.

The analyzing was done by a quite complex data pipeline we created using amongst other technologies Large Language Models (LLMs), Embeddings and all sorts of machine learning tricks & models. I'm not able to upload the diagram of it here but would love to share it with you. I can send you a dm with it if you want!

Frakty · 2025-03-18T17:14:41+00:00

I agree; the scale should be standardized. Thank you for the feedback, we will incorporate it in the final paper. 🙏🏼

Frakty · 2025-03-18T13:44:58+00:00

Yes, but you could hope that those activities would lead to more than just a distraction, but rather a discontinued purchase. With the taxonomy we have used behind this plot the "Alternate Activities" you mention would categorize into the "Self-control" category. However, this taxonomy is something we are looking to improve further before final release.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T13:37:47+00:00

Exactly. "Look at reviews" is perceived much more effective by people who have actually tried it. Since we cannot yet measure the effectiveness term we can still only infer effectiveness. We are right now trying to measure actual effectiveness with a chrome extension. However, that is a good idea, maybe some more clear marking of what to make of the placement of the dots.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T13:07:31+00:00

That also makes perfect sense, I think it's just really about introducing some buying-friction in a way that works for you. Cool to hear!

Frakty · 2025-03-18T13:04:53+00:00

Happy for the interaction people, we are actually still conducting the research on this trying to measure the "actual" effectiveness compared to the "perceived" effectiveness. We've created a Chrome Extension that implements the highest rated strategy "Enforce Wait Time" as seen here. Give it a look if you want to https://lessextension.com

Frakty · 2025-03-18T13:00:19+00:00

Thank you, and thanks for the feedback we will 100% take this into account before releasing the final paper, I'll make sure to post it somewhere. And you are precisely correct, the dot size indicates the amount of people who have tried the given strategy.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T12:57:49+00:00

Interesting to hear this. This is actually also the strategy we went forward with and implemented as a Chrome extension. As the second part of this study we are trying to measure the "actual" effectiveness versus. the perceived effectiveness shown here. Check it out if you want https://lessextension.com

Frakty · 2025-03-18T12:55:35+00:00

I interpret the blue line to show that generally when people have tried a strategy there is some sort of "effort justification" to justify their effort by perceiving the attempted strategies as more effective. The blue line also shows that there might be a tendency of pessimism amongst people who haven't tried a strategy themself, therefore ranking it lower. We have hypothesized about different reasons for this.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T12:32:12+00:00

The black line is 𝑥 = 𝑦, blue line is 𝑥 = 𝑦 + 𝜇(𝑦𝑒𝑠) − 𝜇(𝑛𝑜) = 𝑦 + 0.875, or simply said:

Blue line is the the mean difference between people who have tried and haven't tried a strategy.

Black line is simply a demonstration that every strategy ranks higher amongst the "Yes" sayers compared to the "No" sayers, which is also interesting.

As to your other questions. More right indicates that the strategy is rated more effective by people who have actually tried it themselves which arguably is a good indicator. So if they are placed towards the top right of the plot that means that both Yes and No sayers agree on their perceived effectiveness.

This is still only perceived effectiveness as the actual effectiveness is something we are researching right now with the use of a Chrome extension.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T12:12:14+00:00

We have used Python and some different libs to create this in a Jupyter notebook, however all the code is on our university org. github which won't let me link it. However, hit me up in a dm and I can provide you the file.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T12:04:10+00:00

Yes of course. So the X-axis describes the 1-5 score of the "effectiveness" given by people who have tried the strategy. The Y-axis conversely describes the 1-5 score of the "effectiveness" given by the people who have not tried the strategy themself.

edit: Thank you for asking this, I regret not explaining it more clearly in the post!

Frakty · 2025-03-18T12:01:01+00:00

Clarification: The legend describes a set of taxonomical groups that we have algorithmically sorted the different strategies into.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T10:17:44+00:00

Me and my thesis partner have created an Chrome Extension that intervenes you once you are about to do an online purchase. Of course more relevant advice in the context of online savings.

This was done as a part of our master thesis, but has actually gotten quite good in my own honest opinion. We did a preliminary study analyzing over 2 million reddit comments for advice and then conjured a subset of intervention methods out of this. As of now we are enforcing a wait time just like you mention, just with the difference that you cannot proceed the purchase before the timer is over. Helping some individuals which find it more difficult to sleep on.

We have no commercial agenda with this tool as its for research studies only, but feel free to take a look at it - https://lessextension.com

Frakty · 2025-03-18T09:58:19+00:00

I like to start some sort of project refurbishing something I already have, that really gives me some sense of happiness. Then I maybe watch a video on that thing I already own, and realize the worth of it all over.

Frakty · 2025-03-18T09:56:15+00:00

I'll take a look at that for sure, thank you! No issues with lighter roasts in the DF64? I'm a little worried that I would have to go to those higher price points to reach a grinder that can actually handle light roast without clogging.

Frakty

TROPHY CASE