Why People Are Buying Less (And What’s Really Driving It)

The story brands tell themselves about why people buy second-hand is mostly wrong.

The assumption is that it’s values-led. People care about sustainability, want to reduce their footprint, and are making considered ethical choices. That’s a comfortable narrative, especially for brands that have spent years building sustainability credentials. It’s the question at the heart of the Fellow Futures report ‘What Happens When People Buy Less?’, and the data points in a different direction.

Indeed, research from eBay and Evri shows that 3 in 4 people buy second-hand primarily to save money. Only 45% cite sustainability as their main driver. In the UK, Evri recorded 160% year-on-year growth in parcels from used product sellers. More than half of UK adults now buy or sell pre-loved items every year.

This is happening against a backdrop of real economic pressure. Advanced G20 economies registered declining real wages for two consecutive years, down 2.8% in 2022 and 0.5% in 2023. People are not shopping second-hand because they have discovered a new set of values. They are doing it because new goods have become harder to justify.

The Guilt Absolution Problem

Brands have responded to sustainability pressure by selling guilt-free consumption. Recyclable packaging, carbon offset programmes, upcycled materials, tree-planting partnerships. The message is: you can still buy, and feel good about it.

This approach has a structural problem. According to research published in Frontiers in Psychology, consumers experience genuine cognitive dissonance when forced to choose between personal needs and environmentally friendly products. Layering sustainability messaging onto the same consumption model does not resolve that tension. It papers over it.

Google Trends data supports this. Searches for terms like “sustainable,” “refurbished,” and “carbon footprint” have risen steadily since around 2018, peaking every November, likely tied to pre-Christmas shopping. People are interested in these ideas. But interest and behaviour are not the same thing, and the gap between them is wider than most brand sustainability strategies acknowledge.

According to the previously cited eBay 2025 Recommerce Report, 68% of consumers report feeling good about giving items a second life when buying pre-loved goods. That positive feeling is real. But it follows the purchase decision rather than driving it.

What This Means for Product Brands

The recommerce market is not a niche. It is becoming a structural feature of how people access goods. Platforms like Vinted, Depop and BackMarket are not disrupting retail at the margins. Telephone providers are now offering plans with second-hand devices. The infrastructure for pre-loved is maturing fast.

For product brands, the question is not whether to engage with this shift but how. Brands that treat recommerce as a threat to new product sales are missing the point. The more useful question is what role your brand plays across the full life of a product, not just at the point of first purchase.

The brands that will hold relevance are those that extend their relationship with customers beyond the transaction. That means thinking about resale, repair, and end-of-life as part of the product proposition, not as afterthoughts bolted on for sustainability optics.

Economic conditions made recommerce mainstream. Culture is now catching up. The window to shape that shift, rather than simply react to it, is narrowing.

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Next: The Death of the Trend Cycle explores how speed became a business model dressed up as culture, and why its grip is finally loosening.