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YOLO: A catchy motto and approach to buying

The YOLO lifestyle is surfacing in consumption patterns, according to a trend report by production and advertising company, Innocean Worldwide.

YOLO, short for You Only Live Once, is a motto that encourages people to live life as they want regardless of what others may think.

Spending patterns of YOLO consumers are in line with this mentality - to make small and frequent purchases according to their value and interest.

This kind of consumption pattern can be proved by the new coin word “tangjinjam” that is increasingly appearing in social networks and even the media. A portmanteau for “fritter away (tangjin)” and “fun (jam),” the word means to enjoy by making unnecessary purchases.

Specifically, YOLO consumption was largely divided into three categories: the price-efficient group, maniacs and impulsive shoppers.

The findings were the results of big data analysis that categorized the most frequently used keywords among 60,000 postings on social media networks, blogs and online communities related to consumption.

The efficient shoppers aimed to purchase high-quality products on a low budget.

They were particularly interested in which low-cost product functioned closely to a high-profile brand’s product in the same category.

This group also had the tendency to frequently buy at shops like Daiso and low-cost cosmetic stores.

The maniacs had interests in which they actively invested, just for the sake of collecting.

This group were active researchers and did not consider price a major factor in their purchase decisions.

The words “satisfaction” and “healing” frequently appeared in their online postings. Plastic figurines and comic books were their most favored items.

The impulsive shoppers sought satisfaction in the act of buying itself rather than the product’s innate value. Their purchases were frequently unplanned.

The recent trend of coin karaokes or claw machine games are also associated with this consumption pattern. What was interesting about their set of keywords is that it included expressions related to “regret.”

“The tangjijam-ish consumption pattern is different from small luxury in that consumers find satisfaction from purchases too small to be even called “luxury,” said Lee Soo-jin, head of Innocean’s data analytics team. “Nevertheless, the results showed that people were going after different values to realize YOLO in life from consumption.”

BY SONG KYOUNG-SON [song.kyoungson@joongang.co.kr]