Shopping addiction is a mental disorder that many people overlook. The majority of the population doesn’t consider this to be an actual thing but to many people, it is. This study is aimed to assess the level of shopping that individuals do regularly. This research paper will open a new pathway to the gates of shopping addiction. As well as the physical and mental work behind the decision-making. Gender differences are foreground, we imply that women are the ones who do the most shopping which involves the emotional connection to it, but men buy things that are needed not wanted. These people experience numerous damaging effects at all levels of life, which makes them feel anxious, uneasy, unhappy, guilty, etc. A variety of prompts encourage one to buy constantly. Everybody loves to shop, and the question is what goes behind it, so 6 participants will be divided into two different groups, the compulsive shoppers and the necessity shoppers and we will collect monthly shopping statements from each individual. Doing so we can look back at impulse shopping they may have done or controlled, necessity shopping. The findings that were collected indicated that people don’t shop smart as much as they think they do.
Introduction
Shopping is the action or activity of purchasing goods from stores. Especially with all the different ways we can shop, the high rise of temptation to buy something is sky-rocking when online shopping comes into play. The usage of credit/debit cards to buy products instead of paying cash is a scapegoat when you do not have the money but want something right now and badly. Compulsive buying disorder (oniomania) is a severe problem that is growing by the day. Since the consumer market is continuously expanding, traders have become progressively more focused on how consumers can be persuaded to buy more. The decision-making when buying something can be based on the levels of essentials of an item or just buying something based on a whim. For some people, the problem is impulsivity. Impulse spending is based on psychological nerves of our wants and needs. I want to understand why we buy the things we buy and what are the types of buying behavior.
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Given the information above people may wonder, how do I know if I’m a compulsive shopper? One of the indicators is too much shopping, which is buying something that is not essentially needed, and goods that fall into this category can be of any kind: cuisine, fashion, journeys, toys, etc. Many shopping addicts are so obsessed with piling up new things that they run out of storage space in the house, which leads to a tendency to hide purchases. They will end up jamming the objects into their original boxes, into closets (Robbins & Clark, 2015). What determines the impulse to buy is the feeling one gets at the time of the purchase, it is the most important, and it is not what an ordinary buyer feels about the object that is bought.
Over the years, many psychologists and psychiatrists have provided definitions for compulsive buying disorder which is oniomania; one such example is the definition provided by Bearden and Netemeyer (1999) who argue that oniomania is “a chronic, repetitive manifestation that becomes a primary response to negative events or feelings”. This can include the hours spent shopping and the feeling of being desperate to walk into a store and obligated to buy something whether you like it or not. Despite the financial issues you may have, some people disregard their debt just to satisfy their needs.
If we take into account things such as addiction awareness and the ability to recognize it, we can classify people into three categories: those who do not realize that they have a problem and deny warning signals about their buying compulsion; those who do not have the power to recognize that they lost control and are ashamed to recognize their dependence on others; and, the category with the fewest people, the ones who identify the problem in their lives and agree to do something about it.
Methods
The method is used to compare two compulsive and non-compulsive groups in a real-life purchasing situation. They concluded that the two groups differ in six ways, depending on the characteristics of the choice, the behavior of the search, the number of funds that are spent, the searching of stores, the money spenders, the budget consciousness, the availability of credit cards and the emotional responses to the excess spending.
Discussion
Shopping addicts experience a large array of negative effects, and in time worsening of the situation is destroying their lives. It is important that a person recognizes these behaviors of compulsive shopping disorder and will strive to overcome addiction following the rules with his or her therapist: to spend more time with family, which before had neglected altogether; to keep a buyer's diary in which to record all purchases; to make shopping lists before leaving home and respect it; to avoid being alone in the stores, if it was a habit before, etc.
This data that has been collected can influence possible compulsive shoppers and direct them away from this disorder. Possibly to identify their issues and take control. Having this disorder can shy you away from friends, family, and yourself. You must find your true happiness and not in something like money or buying worldly things. It is not surprising at all that people tend to overdo it when it comes to shopping. We are around advertisements, credit cards, and influences every day, so it's hard to not give in.
An article that I selected to support my data was “An Experimental Examination of Cognitive Processes and Response Inhibition in Patients Seeking Treatment for buying-shopping Disorder.” This article pinpointed my exact experiment to show the views of compulsive buying disorder. This study helped me to strengthen and prove my theory.
References
- Bearden, W. O., & Netemeyer, R. G. (1999). Handbook of marketing scales: Multi-item measures for marketing and consumer behavior research. Sage.
- Robbins, T. W., & Clark, L. (2015). Behavioral addictions. Current opinion in neurobiology, 30, 66-72.
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