Users on a growing number of websites are placing orders for expensive items like handbags and watches, though the goods never leave the server. This week, I placed orders for a $44,860 Patek Philippe hand-engraved watch, a $12,500 Hermès handbag, a $9,800 Tiffany diamond ring, and a $7,350 Cartier Love bracelet in yellow gold. I don’t need any of them. I certainly can’t afford them. Thankfully, they’ll never arrive. Instead of Amazon, I spent the past week browsing a new breed of websites known as “dopamine sites,” a trend that emerged in South Korea. These websites — like Dopamine Shop and FoodNeverComes — recreate the entire ritual of online shopping: You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order, and even track your delivery. Then … nothing happens. No money changes hands. No package arrives.
A screenshot showing a food delivery that will never arrive. The sites are designed to mimic the real thing. Users browse through categories, read product descriptions, and click the buy button. The screen confirms the purchase. The user can even watch a fake map showing a delivery truck moving toward their house. It is tempting to dismiss them as another quirky internet trend. But after spending a week placing imaginary orders, I found myself wondering if online shopping has stopped being solely about buying things. South Korea is one of the world’s most mature e-commerce markets, where digital payments, food delivery, and online retail are deeply embedded in everyday life. That makes it an ideal place for an idea like fake shopping to materialize. But the behavior itself is far more universal.
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Shriram Venkatraman, an assistant professor at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study who researches digital consumption, culture, and commerce, said people in many places have browsed without buying. He noted that window-shopping, filling online carts, and leaving them there are common behaviors. People have fantasized about things they might own, compared products without any immediate intention to purchase, or simply enjoyed the anticipation of acquiring something. Venkatraman said what is particularly Korean at this moment is not necessarily the underlying behavior, but the way that behavior has been formalized into a digital service.
Purchasing and shopping are not necessarily the same act. The former is about acquiring and the latter is more of a ritual. The pleasure from dopamine websites comes from the ritual. People are prioritizing anticipation, choice, and curation over ownership, reaping the psychological rewards of shopping without the financial consequences. Helen Jambunathan, a consumer anthropologist and director of insight at Canvas8, a London-based consultancy, compared this phenomenon to shopping carts on e-commerce websites. She noted that people use online shopping carts for reasons well beyond an immediate intention to buy. They could do it to gather information, organize possible purchases, wait for promotions, and sometimes just for entertainment. Venkatraman said one way of looking at dopamine sites is that they take a behavior that already existed around ordinary e-commerce and make that behavior itself much more central to the experience.
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The concept of retail therapy has been around for a long time, and it persists for a reason. Jambunathan said “fake” shopping sites are interesting as they reveal shopping as an emotional experience, not just a transactional one. While there may be some differences, she said most shopping is still driven by necessity and convenience. Venkatraman also said the differences are often less about nationality than circumstance. He noted that the same person might shop out of necessity in the morning, out of boredom at lunch, aspirationally around payday, and perhaps even out of loneliness at midnight. What changes across countries is often the context surrounding those moments: what people can afford, what counts as desirable, what friends are buying, whether purchases are made individually or as a household, and even how easy local payment systems make it to complete a purchase.