Performative Consumption: How Seasonal Content, Social Media, and Buy Now, Pay Later Turn Display into Debt
Abstract
Consumers increasingly buy seasonal goods to be seen with them: filmed hauls, staged seasonal setups, and themed gift baskets, some paid for with credit they cannot comfortably repay. This paper calls the pattern performative consumption and traces how short-form video, a year-round seasonal retail calendar, and buy now, pay later (BNPL) credit reinforce one another. Drawing on theory from Veblen, Goffman, Belk, and Festinger and on current government and industry data, we show that each link is documented separately: record Halloween spending, near-record credit card debt, and BNPL users who are increasingly late on payments and who use installment loans for groceries.
The evidence is circumstantial. No study yet tests the full chain from content to purchase to delinquency, and consumer pushback and evidence that BNPL poses limited systemic risk argue against alarm. We propose five testable hypotheses and close with practical guidance for consumers, creators, and retailers.
Key findings
- Halloween spending is projected at $13.5 billion in 2026, up from a record $13.1 billion in 2025 (National Retail Federation).
- U.S. credit card balances reached $1.26 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, just under the record $1.28 trillion set in late 2025 (Federal Reserve Bank of New York).
- In a 2026 LendingTree online survey, 47% of BNPL users had paid late in the past year and 29% had used BNPL for groceries. The survey is commissioned by a lender marketplace, so treat the figures as indicative.
- In an August 2023 Bankrate survey, 48% of social media users said they had ever made an impulse purchase of something they saw there, and 68% of those buyers regretted at least one purchase.
- What is not known: no study measures the full chain from seasonal content to filmed purchase to financing to delinquency, and the CFPB found that many differences between BNPL borrowers and non-borrowers predate BNPL use, so causation is unresolved.
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Statistics were checked against the sources in the paper’s reference list as of October 25, 2026. This is general information, not personalized financial advice.