Bella*, a Melburnian in her late 50s, is driving me between shopping centres. We’re on a “comp shop”, an expedition bouncing from store to store to buy products that are part of promotional competitions. As she steers around a corner, bottles of wine clang together in the boot and a slab of beer shuffles along the backseat. Despite the fact that Bella doesn’t drink alcohol, her car has become a “bit of a hiding spot” from her family for the products she buys to enter competitions. Bella’s daughter thinks comping is “like gambling”.
“Tell you what though, she loved the trip to Italy!”
Bella is one of more than 90 avid “compers” – serial entrants of promotional competitions – who have taken part in my doctoral research, an ethnographic study of comping communities in Australia and the UK.
Promotional competitions are everywhere – you’ll find “buy to win” offers online and instore, at supermarkets, department stores, convenience shops and chemists. There is also an ecosystem of websites, forums and Facebook groups built around cataloguing competitions and discussing which to enter.
It is perhaps unsurprising that the majority of compers are the primary shopper for their household, and female. Like Bella winning a trip to Italy, most compers I spoke to had celebrated at least one so-called “major win” (a holiday, a car or a big cash prize) and multiple “little wins” (products and gift cards).
Diane, for example, is in her 30s and is the mother of two young boys. She began comping after meeting Jo at her local mother’s group on Victoria’s eastern coast. Jo had won a trip to New York, among other smaller wins, and the two quickly became friends, finding and entering competitions together. Diane’s first major win was an all-expenses-paid trip to Golden Door, a wellness resort in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales.
During one of our coffee dates Diane described weighing up whether to spend more than $100 on a cologne that would count as an entry into a competition to win a luxury holiday. She explained that because the contest was aimed at men, who tend to enter fewer competitions than women, and due to the high price point, “it won’t have many entries”. Plus, she rationalised: “I could gift the cologne to my husband for Christmas.”
Compers like Diane and Bella are strategic in how they enter competitions. They know which will attract fewer entrants and therefore come with better odds; as well as those to avoid, else become another number on a scam caller’s list. Often compers prefer a particular type of competition. Some like entering games of skill which require a creative response to a question or challenge (for instance: “in 25 words or less describe why you deserve a trip to Thailand”) while others prefer games of chance (buy this product and keep your receipt to enter).
While the prizes are comping’s obvious drawcard, compers also describe the emotional payoffs. “You never forget a win, where you were, what you were doing … it’s such a rush,” Bella says. She also says: “You never know what’s coming around the corner.”
Diane says this sense of potential lifted her from “a rut” she found herself in during maternity leave. She recommends comping to her female friends who might be entering a rut themselves. As one UK comper put it: “Many people buy a lottery ticket and hope for a positive outcome. Compers may do that [too] but look for other opportunities to gain some treats and extras. You don’t know on a daily basis when you might receive a phone call, text, email, letter or surprise parcel and that adds excitement to everyday life.”
Comping can also become a compulsion. Bella explains: “It’s an addiction and it attracts people with addictive personalities.” Indeed, two compers I spoke to began comping in ultimately successful attempts to overcome gambling addictions. One said it gave her the same “thrills” as gambling but “without the debt”.
Comping takes time and, when a product purchase is required, money. While most compers justify such expenditure, some feel uneasy about the way the activity can hold their attention.
Edith, for example, who is in her 60s and lives in Melbourne’s suburbs, told me comping coincided with a period when she spent a lot of time and lost considerable money playing slot machines.She believed comping inspired her to play the slot machines and vice versa. Both activities kept her focused on the possibility of the win, the “thrill of the chase”.
“We are inconsistent about what we think constitutes gambling as well as which kinds are helpful or harmful,” the British anthropologist Rebecca Cassidy wrote after attendees at a community raffle told her they were surprised she was there to study gambling.
The way we think about gambling and promotional competitions has changed considerably over the last 150 years. In Victorian and Edwardian England, when lotteries were outlawed, promotional competitions could be deemed “disguised lotteries” and some organisers faced prosecution accordingly. UK advertisers have only been legally able to offer game of chancecompetitions, for which entry requires a “qualifier” or product purchase, since 2007.
In Australia, these competitions have been legal for decades, although organisers may need a permit.
Today gambling is so normalised in both countries – through betting apps, websites, television commercials, billboards, betting stores and slot machines – that a “chance to win” sticker at the supermarket seems quaint and playful.
But whether it’s buying a specially marked chocolate bar or spending an evening at the casino, all these phenomena hold our attention by giving us “thrills”: experiences of anticipation and potentiality. So, if comping feels a bit like gambling, that’s because it kind of is.
*All research participants’ names have been changed
Some of the examples and ideas in this article are derived from an article in the journal Ethnos. Cynthia Sear is a researcher and PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Melbourne where she is a recipient of an Australian government research training program scholarship. She thanks Prof Andrew Dawson for his advice on this article
