By By Siphesihle Dlamini
Every December, Eswatini’s supermarkets transform into glittering theatres of festive seduction, where bright lights, colourful banners, and red-and-gold themed displays cast a spell powerful enough to make even the most financially disciplined consumer loosen their grip on the purse.
The smell of pine-scented cleaning products mingles with Christmas carols floating from overhead speakers, and somewhere between the vegetable aisle and the tills, shoppers find themselves drawn to the most strategically positioned festive bait of all: the Christmas hamper.
Wrapped in shiny cellophane, crowned with generous bows, and arranged in perfect pyramids near entrances and checkout points, these hampers look like symbols of festive abundance. These ready-made gifts promise convenience, elegance, and the illusion of savings.
Yet behind the glitter, ribbons, and decorative baskets lies a quieter truth: many of these hampers cost significantly more than the combined price of their individual items, turning what should be a gesture of generosity into a costly financial trap.
This year, as part of the Financial Consumer Watch desk’s festive season investigations, we visited supermarkets, comparing hamper prices with the cost of purchasing their contents separately.
The findings were alarming but unsurprising; in store after store, consumers were unknowingly paying 25 to 40 per cent more for the convenience of a pre-packed gift. In one case, a hamper sold for E499 contained items worth E351 on shelf prices. In another, an E699 hamper held products costing just E480 if picked individually.
The shiny packaging, the ribbon, and the appearance of festive generosity accounted for the extra E150 to E250 being quietly added to the bill. And yet shoppers continued reaching for them, their eyes fixed on the visual appeal rather than the numbers that mattered.
Retailers understand that the festive season suspends rational consumer behaviour. December brings with it emotional generosity, fatigue, and a desire for convenience that overrides financial caution.
After twelve months of comparing prices, budgeting tightly, and checking every special, many consumers walk into stores tired from work, excited about family gatherings, anxious about gift preparations, and in no mood to think critically about a cellophane-wrapped bundle decorated with fake holly
. Add to that the pressure of long queues, noisy aisles, and the endless soundtrack of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and the perfect psychological storm emerges. Under such conditions, a hamper becomes more than a bundle of groceries; it becomes an escape from decision fatigue, a shortcut to gift-giving, a symbol of effort in a season where effort is already exhausted.
Yet some of the strangest findings of the investigation were not the expensive, premium-looking hampers. It was the budget ones, the ones with basic items like juice, biscuits, rice, tea bags, tissues, bath soap, and washing powder, that had the highest markups. These hampers, supposedly created for families on a budget, were some of the most overpriced.
The irony is that most shoppers would never consider buying these items as standalone gifts. No one confidently hands a family member a bar of bath soap or a box of budget tea as a Christmas present.
But once these items are bundled together in a basket, they become socially acceptable as “hamper gifts,” and consumers are willing to pay extra for the convenience and perceived respectability.
This is the psychological magic retailers rely on; when you wouldn’t give the items alone, you will gladly give them when they are tightly wrapped together in cellophane.
