Timers count down how long you have before you’ll miss out on a deal. And when a roulette wheel of discounts and store credit pops up with tantalising rewards (and seemingly no possibility of losing), it would seem silly not to give it a shot, right?

The dopamine hit from activities like spinning a wheel and landing a discount help reel us in, keep us engaged, and get us invested in making use of our reward, which, of course, means spending. The countdowns, meanwhile, fuel a sense of scarcity and urgency which compel us to act now (often impulsively), rather than abandon our cart.

Gamification, of course, is not just an online phenomenon. McDonald’s, for instance, runs its Monopoly promotion every year, encouraging customers to collect tokens, some of which can be exchanged instantly in-store for discounts.

But there are few e-commerce sites which have used these tactics so heavily, and converted so many people into customers. Despite only launching in 2022, Temu has become the fifth most popular online retail brand in Australia, with an estimated 1.2 million Australians checking out on the platform, and $1.3 billion spent by them annually.

Of course, part of this comes from the hundreds of millions of dollars the company has splashed each year on advertising. This includes money spent to flood social media platforms with ads and, in the US, even a spot at the most sought-after marketing opportunity: the Super Bowl.

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Since Temu’s debut, its Chinese parent company Pinduoduo has seemingly gone from strength to strength. In the first three months of this year, it raked in nearly $5.4 billion in profit, triple its earnings from the same period last year.

Apart from its mammoth marketing budget, Temu has probably also benefited from launching at a time when inflation pressures, especially across developed economies, have driven customers to intensify their hunt for bargains.

Amazon, the US behemoth which launched back in 1994 as an online bookstore, still holds the top spot in e-commerce when it comes to profits and sales globally. But companies such as Temu have come under particular scrutiny because of a Chinese intelligence law which allows Beijing to access sensitive information held by Chinese firms.

While information on the $2 phone case you bought from Temu might not be too consequential, there are suspicions the Chinese government could be accessing personal information which could expose customers to fraud or cyberattacks.

And while misbehaviour by multinationals isn’t an issue unique to Chinese companies, regulation and compliance in China can be looser. Temu, for instance, has been accused of selling products built with slave labour. And authorities in Seoul this month found women’s accessories sold by companies including Shein, Temu and AliExpress contained toxic substances, some at hundreds of times above the legal limit.

There are also wider economic implications of shopping with these platforms. A tactic often used by new companies is to temporarily sell at loss-making prices; that is, they sell their goods for less than it costs to make and ship them.

It can’t be done forever, but businesses with money to burn can use these aggressive strategies to drive smaller competitors into the ground or steal customers away from bigger rivals. Consumers benefit, for a little while, from cheaper prices, but competing businesses may suffer and so, eventually, will consumers.

Then, there’s the issue of sharing data. The internet has made it easier for companies to collect personal and minute behavioural information at an unprecedented scale.

While this can be beneficial when companies can match you with products you actually need, at prices that can’t be beaten, it can also help them take advantage of our weaknesses and play to our psychology in ways that make us spend more than we should.

There’s little doubt heavy use of gamification on sites such as Temu is already hooking us in. But by engaging with these tactics in the first place, we’re also feeding into the algorithms they use, and helping these companies figure out what makes us tick.

Temu’s tagline is “shop like a billionaire”, but unless we stay alert to the risks and tactics used by these e-commerce giants, it will be their pockets we end up lining.

While new and competitive businesses are a good thing for consumers looking for a bargain, we should keep a careful eye on these firms. After all, they’re keeping a close watch on ours.

Millie Muroi is an economics writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She is based in Canberra.

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