New York ( CNN ) -- Three years ago I began research on a book dedicated to the national pastimes : shopping and buying . The plan was to devote the first half of the story to what I called the `` sell side '' : the retailers , marketers and consumer researchers who have their sights trained on us . The second half would be about us , the `` buy side . '' I would explore all that attracts us -- bees to nectar -- to specific stores and products , why some of us are cheapskates and others have holes in our pockets . Then , a not-so-funny thing happened . Between the time I started my reporting and the time I handed in my finished manuscript , both the sell and the buy sides had cratered . Home prices crashed . Credit markets collapsed . The government tried feverishly to glue broken banks back together . Unemployment went up and up and up . The result : consumer spending -- as in that which drives 70 percent of the U.S. economy -- was running on fumes . Department store sales sank by double-digits . `` The golden age of spending for the American consumer has ended and a new age of thrift likely has begun , '' said a Wall Street analyst . `` Sixty percent off is the new black , '' quipped a magazine fashion writer . Gone , seemingly overnight , were the throngs of buyers from Europe and Asia who had been dragging their wheelies down Fifth Avenue in New York , loading up on shoes and handbags and leaving us American shoppers feeling , even then , like poor country cousins . Word spread that we were now living in `` the Wal-Mart moment , '' which was likely to be rather drawn out . Our longstanding fetish for bigger , faster , flashier , pricier was no more.. With the most hyped shopping day on the calendar -- Black Friday ! -- upon us , we all might take a deep breath and focus , not just on where to find the best door-busters , but on more important questions : What is going on out there ? In the buying and selling universe , are we witnessing a permanent change in values ? Have we all turned forever frugal ? The fact is , nobody 's quite sure right now . Over the past several months , there have been small signs of recovery . Consumer confidence surveys offer a glimmer of hope . On the `` sell side '' retailers are viewing the holiday selling season with slightly more optimism than when they put in their holiday purchase orders six months ago . And it seems reasonable to hope that we 've at least touched bottom and that the consumer escalator is on the way up again , however fitfully . But on the buy side -- our side -- things have changed dramatically , and in some ways for the better . We 're shopping more with our heads , not just our hearts ; we 're thinking about the things we buy . A woman in Boston -- affluent , accomplished , largely unscathed by the financial collapse -- told me that when she now looks back on the expensive shoes and clothes she bought routinely just a few years ago , she `` just ca n't believe what I was doing . '' The Internet is now a daily , indispensable tool we use to search for better prices and seek counsel from others with firsthand knowledge of brands and stores we might be considering . The result : Up and down the socioeconomic ladder we 're shopping more prudently . We 're paying down credit card balances and placing greater value not just on the new and novel , the cool and the trendy , but also on value itself . Does it work ? Is the price fair ? Will it last ? And yes , we 're also splurging now and then -- on impulse purchases that can make a day all the more sweet : a new hairstyle , a brightly colored this-or-that for spring , an electronic gadget that performs amazing tricks , some useful , some just diverting . There are those who would tell us that purchases like this -- `` unnecessary ! '' `` juvenile ! '' etc . -- are signs of character weakness , that we are routinely `` conned '' into buying useless things by manipulative Mad Men , but I think it 's more complicated . Because if there 's one thing I learned after three years of watching folks shop and buy -- in good times , then bad -- it is n't that we buy that 's been our problem , it 's how we bought that was the issue : recklessly , and with little more than a piece of plastic or phantom home equity . But that was then . This is now , and a little self-reward -- a from-me-to-me purchase here , an I-love-you purchase there -- are hardly crimes in my book . Assuming , of course , they do n't bring down the house -- this holiday season and beyond . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Lee Eisenberg .
Lee Eisenberg says a down economy has turned American spenders into scrimpers . The Associated Press contributed to this report. Eisenberg : Consumers are placing a new importance on value when they buy .