Imagine you have a bag you really like. It felt like “the one” when you bought it.
Over time, it starts to look worn. There are some scuffs on it. Nothing is actually wrong with the bag, and it still works exactly as it should. Yet, once you notice those imperfections, you start thinking about buying a new one to replace it.
Consumers do this all the time. They replace phones that still work, furniture with a scratch and sweaters with a small snag. Often, what has changed is how people see these items.
We are marketing researchers who study why people buy, use and get rid of stuff. This obsession with perfection began when one of us, Aprajita Gautam, moved from India to the U.S. in 2019. She was struck by how different the culture of buying and owning things was in the two countries.
In our peer-reviewed research paper, published in August 2026 in the Journal of Consumer Research, we identified one reason for this pattern: Some people care much more than others about having flawless things. We call this penchant a desire for perfect products.
Not the same as perfectionism
We began by interviewing 17 people in Austin, Texas, in 2023. They included real estate agents, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home mothers and people employed by an nonprofit that promotes reuse. We asked them about their possessions and what made things seem perfect or imperfect. We then surveyed about 540 more people, some online and some in a university research lab.
The results suggested that people who strongly preferred flawless items had more elaborate ideas about what their ideal product was and were sensitive to even small deviations from those ideas. Their standards also kept rising. Seeing something better than what they owned could raise the bar further for them.
Next, we developed questions to assess how much people care about having flawless possessions. We used people’s answers to determine how strongly they desired perfect products.
We also found that this tendency is related to but distinct from perfectionism. While perfectionists hold themselves to high or even impossible standards, people who want perfect stuff hold what they buy and own to lofty standards. You might easily shrug off a bad day at the office but be far less forgiving of a scratch on your new coffee table.
For people who feel they have to own perfect products, even a small imperfection can overshadow everything else they like about something they own.
Finally, we conducted 12 experiments where we recruited participants – University of Texas at Austin students and online workers participating in crowdsourcing marketplaces – to test the behavioral effects of the desire for perfect possessions.
It can affect how you shop
In our first online experiment, we asked 402 consumers across the country to imagine booking a hotel in California’s Napa Valley using filters like those on travel websites, such as star rating, Wi-Fi or a spa.
Consumers who desired perfect products used more filters and set higher cutoffs, narrowing their search to hotels that came closer to meeting their standards.
Newness itself also had value for them.
In another online experiment with 301 consumers, those who cared most about owning flawless possessions were quicker to upgrade to the latest iPhone, even when it offered little real improvement over the previous one.
This urge can be costly. It can mean paying extra for something new when the old one works fine, or spending more time searching for a product that meets every standard that may not actually matter.
Makes people less open to repairs
This preference also affects what people do with the stuff they already own.
In our next online experiment, we asked 1,004 U.S. participants to chose between two options: an insulated coffee mug and an insulated water bottle. When told that the product they chose had a small dent on the bottom, those who were most bothered by flaws in their possessions were more likely to swap it for the other option.
We found a similar pattern with repairs. In an online experiment with 601 consumers, we found that those who want to own perfect products were less interested in fixing a broken keyboard when the replacement key wouldn’t match the color of the other keys.
This highlights a problem with repairs that isn’t usually part of discussions about sustainable consumption: Fixing something can restore its function without necessarily making it look as good as new.
A factor for donations
Consumers with exacting standards for their things also applied their high standards to items they were getting rid of.
In an experiment we conducted in a university behavioral lab, we asked 339 students to help with a “Clean Out Your Closet” drive. They examined pieces of clothing that others had discarded and sorted them into two bins: one to donate and one to recycle.
Those who strongly preferred flawless items were less likely to donate imperfect but still usable clothing. This attitude can shorten a product’s useful life.
That finding has implications for sustainability. Much of the academic research about sustainable consumption focuses on what people buy. But another way to consume less is to keep products in use longer.
That becomes harder if small imperfections make otherwise useful products seem less valuable.
Learning to value imperfection
Our research suggests that how someone responds to flaws in their possessions can vary depending on what those flaws mean to them. We were inspired in part by the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty and value in imperfection and change.
In our final online experiment, 1,203 consumers learned about hoodies with subtle variations in color and pattern. When those variations were described as making each hoodie unique, consumers who love having perfect products responded less negatively to them.
A mark on a well-used object can be seen as a flaw, but it can also become part of its history. And replacing products because of minor imperfections can lead consumers to waste their money.
None of this means consumers should keep everything forever. Mugs break and clothing and shoes get worn out. Sometimes people simply want something new.
But consider that bag again. Its scuffs could mean it is no longer the perfect bag you originally bought. Or they could mean you’ve carried it hundreds of times because you like it.
This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.
