The Effects Of Compulsive Shopping Habits

700 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Conclusion for compulsive shopping

The shopping habits of persons have for a long time been thought to have a bearing on their moods. There are persons that claim to get a soothing effect from compulsive buying, especially when they feel low or depressed. The shopping behavior of women and men has been the source of so many jokes, majorly emphasizing on the different approaches that the two genders employ when it comes to shopping (Krueger, 1988). The research proposal explores the question of whether the mood of an individual affects his/her shopping habits. It will also determine what specific effects particular moods of persons result in.
According to Faber and Christenson (1996), compulsive shopping disorder is caused by abnormal levels of serotonin in the brain. This chemical is also responsible for the other addictions, such as alcoholism, gambling, and sex addiction. It has not yet been recognized by the psychiatry experts as a mental illness, and this contributes to very little being known about it (Liddane, 2006). Faber and Christenson further argue that other psychological problems can lead to a person acquiring the compulsive shopping disorder. Examples of these problems include low self-esteem; desire for approval or recognition; high propensity to fantasize; and a desire for arousal or stimulation. These psychological problems have also been observed in a person having uncontrollable impulse disorders.
Furthermore, the sociological factors that might contribute to the development of this condition are gender roles, early life experiences, the disintegration of modern life, and the influence of the mainstream media that depicts shopping as a positive form of release. Most of the compulsive buyers have reported having experienced a brief period of ple...

... middle of paper ...

...ave been formed by compulsive shoppers due to the financial strain that the habit has inflicted on them. These former compulsive shoppers mixed with those that are currently struggling to curb that habit meet regularly to assist each other in avoiding the habit. One of the major things that contribute to compulsive shopping is the credit offered to individuals through credit cards. The stoppage of using plastic money and reverting to cash can help one limit his/her shopping, as they are unlikely to walk around with huge amounts of money required for this indulgence. Lidden expresses having been disappointed in the medical and psychological community for not declaring this an illness and yet it causes so much misery to the victims. Besides the financial implications, families are broken as a result of the other spouse feeling that the compulsive person is wasteful.

Show More
Related

  • Ethnography of Shopping: Scoop versus Century 21

    1008 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shopping is not simply a chore; it is also an experience. Shopping for clothing is a particularly personal decision, and various motivating factors can cause one shopper to choose a particular store over another store. Some consumers go to the store to confirm that they belong to a certain social stratum, others because they enjoy the thrill of a bargain. According to Daniel Miller in ‘Making Love in Super Markets’, the behavior of consumers in supermarkets tends to fall into two categories: ‘treat’ shoppers and ‘thrift’ shoppers.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Overselling Capitalism Benjamin Barber

    202 Words  | 1 Pages

    In his work, “Overselling capitalism,” Benjamin Barber speaks on capitalism’s shift from filling the needs of the consumer, to creating needs. He tells how it has become easier for people to borrow money, so that they no longer get as much satisfaction from affording necessities. He says capitalism can be good when both sides benefit, but it has overgrown and must continue creating needs, even though the only people who can afford these needs don’t have any. According to Barber, people are still working hard, but them and their children are becoming seduced by unneeded shopping. He states that people are becoming more needy, and losing discipline in their lifestyle. Additionally capitalism must encourage easy and addicting shopping to

    Read More

  • The Science Of Shopping Essay

    1280 Words  | 3 Pages

    Here I go again preparing to go to the store Stater Bros and checking my shopping list to see what to buy. As I walk through the store to my left, I can see the organic food and wind up at Services Deli while when going to my right. Buying prepared food saves me time cooking at home and the store has exclusive recipes for everyone. “Human begins walk the way they drive, which is to say that Americans tend to keep to the right when they stroll down shopping mall concourses or city sidewalks,” according to Malcolm Gladwell in his article “The Science of Shopping” (1). He explains how consumers’ shopping behaviors are affected by walking from scanning from left to the right and how it is easier for shoppers to do. Charles Duhigg, writer of The Power of Habit, says that “Realization came from a growing awareness of how powerfully habits influence almost every shopping decision. A series of experiments convinced marketers that if they managed to understand a particular shopper’s habits, they could get

    Read More

  • History of the American Department Stores

    3093 Words  | 7 Pages

    Over the years, the American department store has developed and evolved as not only a commercial business but also a cultural institution. While it has weathered many storms and changes since its inception and throughout history, its most predominant enemy has been a change in the lifestyle of the American people (Whitaker, 2013). As the customer’s needs and wants have shifted, department stores have struggled to keep up with demands. It has been argued that the decline of the department store has been ongoing for the last 50 years (Whitaker, 2013). This dissertation aims to understand how the department store has historically played a role in consumer culture and spending, and additionally, how this has evolved and changed in today’s retail market. Although department stores may not be able to take all the credit for inventing modern shopping, they certainly made its conventions and conveniences commonplace. They set a new standard for the way the consumer should expect to be treated, the type of services that should be provided, and the convenience that should attend the process of acquiring the necessities and niceties of life all in one place. They made shopping into a leisure pastime. This environment meant shopping was a means of freedom to look around, pick up objects with no obligations to buy. As one historian remarked, department stores: “encouraged a perception of the building as a public place, where consumption itself was almost incidental to the delights of a sheltered promenade in a densely crowded, middle-class urban space” (Whitaker, 2006). Although this perception and view of the department store has changed over the years, this paper aims to follow the trail of how and why that happened.

    Read More

  • The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective

    2462 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the introduction, de Grazia lays the groundwork for why we should be concerned with how gender impacts the study of consumption. Simplistic notions of naturally or inevitably identifying the female sex with shopping sprees are challenged in favor of a deeper inquiry into the assumptions revolving around AMr. Breadwinner@ and AMrs. Consumer@(3). Instead of merely debating whether consumption is liberating or oppressive, these essays are concerned with the study of consumption in terms of the construction of gender roles, class relations, the family, and the state.

    Read More

  • Compulsive Hoarding: A Stifled Chaos

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    Addiction can be a disorder filled with denial and regret, and is often sparked by one’s free will. Children are taught, as early as elementary school, to abstain from drugs and alcohol, which constitute the two of the largest culprits of addiction. Naturally, when one ponders addiction, his or her mind automatically travels to the realm of addictive substances, and does not consider what else may constitute as an addiction. What about an addiction affecting nearly a million Americans that does not involve choice? It is an addiction so mysterious that a significant percentage of sufferers go undiagnosed due to hidden mounds of unnecessary clutter. According to Randy Frost and Tamara Hartl, hoarding is medically defined as “the acquisition of, and inability to discard worthless items even though they appear (to others) to have no value” (Defining Compulsive Hoarding). Compulsive hoarding is a devastating disorder that affects an estimated 700,000 to 1.4 million people in the United States (Maidment).

    Read More

  • Consumerism In 'Raj, Bohemian' By Hari Kunzulan

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many people who are driven by consumerism, and many people who wish they could get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often encouraged to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage YouTube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges.

    Read More

  • Barbara W. Tuchman's 'Persumption Of Consumption'

    1094 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Proper society did not think about making money, only about spending it,” said Barbara W. Tuchman. This quote shows our real world, and the people that spend money, but they forget about the value of money. Nowadays people want more than they have. They forget how many things they have and how much money they spend. Most people when they see people having something better, they think that they need it also. Also, people forget how hard they get that money, but how easily and quickly they spend it. In the article “The Treadmill of Consumption” by Roberts, he says that people are willing to go into debt to buy certain products and brands. That is right that people can do crazy things to buy certain goods. Sometimes people

    Read More

  • The Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

    1189 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Encyclopedia of Health: Compulsive Behavior, Chelsea House Publishers Tallis, F. (1995) Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A Cognitive and Neuropsychological Perspective, John Wiley and Sons Llt. “Choices” November/December 2004, Scholastic publications http://www.ocfoundation.org

    Read More

  • Shopping In America

    493 Words  | 1 Pages

    Who doesn’t like shopping? I can’t name one person. Phyllis rose states many positive qualities in her essay “Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures in America Today”. One of the positives qualities she mentions about shopping is that it’s a form of therapy. Being that I love to shop. Rather it’s online or going to the stores it’s something I also find very therapeutic. You don't really need, let's say, another sweater. You need the feeling of power that comes with buying or not buying it. You need the feeling that someone wants something you have--even if it's just your money. To get the benefit of shopping, you needn't actually purchase the sweater. After a long stressful work or school day there’s nothing more relaxing than walking around

    Read More

  • 'The Treadmill Of Consumption By Roberts's Consumers Of Consumption'

    933 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Proper society did not think about making money, only about spending it.”, said Barbara W. Tuchman. This quote shows our real world, and the people that spend money, but they forget about the value of money. Nowadays people want more that they have. They forget how many things they have, and how much money they spend. Most people when they see other people having something better, and in that moment they want to have it also. Also, people forget how hard they got that money, but how easily and quickly they spend it. In the article “The treadmill of consumption” by Roberts, he says that people are willing to go into debt to buy certain products and brands. That is right that people can do crazy things to buy certain goods.

    Read More

  • Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome

    1788 Words  | 4 Pages

    Imagine how much trash and waste people discard in their lifetimes. Now imagine a person living in that waste they have accumulated in their lifetime stored in their own homes because of their inability to discard the useless items. This is what day-to-day life is like for a compulsive hoarder. Compulsive hoarding is a chronic behavioral syndrome that is defined by a person's extreme retention of useless items and crippling inability to discard such items. Compulsive hoarding has been traditionally recognized amongst psychiatrists and researchers in human behavior as a sub-type of obsessive-compulsive disorder due to similar symptoms hoarders have with those that suffer from OCD. However, there is substantial evidence that proves contrary. Hoarders often have several other behavioral or physical symptoms that are not typical of a person with OCD, hoarders also have genetic and physical anomalies different from OCD, and finally, most compulsive hoarders do not respond to treatments intended for OCD patients. Because of these differences, compulsive hoarding should be seen as a separate syndrome apart from OCD, so that the disorder may be categorized and studied accurately in order to pursue more effective treatments.

    Read More

  • Consumption and Identity

    1714 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many theorists suggest that consumption is correlated to the identity of an individual, that by purchasing goods from the mass market, it enables us to visibly establish our position within society. This differs from previous times in which a range of factors such as family histories, character and personal achievements played a significant role (Gabriel and Lang, 2006). Instead, there is the idea that the consumer has the ability to gain pleasure over objects, not just solely by the manipulation of objects, but through the degree of control over their meaning. The degree of control is developed and achieved through imagination and provides greater possibilities of pleasure experiences. This suggests that modern consumption can be seen as device that enables individuals to ‘dream’ about the desires they wish to fulfill. (Campbell, 1989: 79) (Cited in Gabirel & Lang, 2006)

    Read More

  • Consumerism In America Essay

    1292 Words  | 3 Pages

    Consumerism has always been a big part of society back in the golden days. In today’s society, the ongoing debate of wants and needs are not justified by an individual’s wealth, but it is rather opinionated by the generalized public. Not only are the consumers getting caught in this mess, but many retailers are being sucked in as well. Retailers, have to stay up to date with the latest trends, to make sure they get their products across. Human identity is no longer determined by how much a person makes an hour, but by the commodities they possess. Consumers are so centralized on the materialistic items, that they forget what is more valuable and important. Unfortunately, the frivolous consumption has taken over the

    Read More

  • Smart Shoppers Essay

    754 Words  | 2 Pages

    Everyone likes shopping, but everyone has their own way of spending when they go shopping. I love shopping, but I hate being at the mall, if I don’t need to be there then I won’t be there. I’ve noticed that when I have money, I do not buy anything, and when I do not have money I want everything I see. From my experience I’ve observed that there are people who shop smart, people who are just plain addicted to shopping, people who join another person while shopping, basically called window watchers.

    Read More

More about The Effects Of Compulsive Shopping Habits

Open Document