Insights into brand addiction and compulsive shopping

Research in the International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development has looked at whether what we might refer to as brand addiction leads to compulsive buying of fast-moving consumer goods. By brand addiction in this context, the researchers imply a blindness to other brands that might be available on the market.

D. Chitra, V. Mahalakshmi, B. Lakshmi, and Yabesh Abraham Durairaj Isravel of the Department of Management Studies at Panimalar Engineering College in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India used a descriptive research design to carry out their investigation gathering data from almost 400 buyers through random sampling questionnaire. The team used Pearson Correlation and Regression analysis to analyze the data.

The team found that most customers in this grouping were female and aged 30–45, and working in the private sector. The team suggests that having a favorite, prestigious brand and previous experience with that brand nudges respondents towards brand addiction. In addition, they found that obsessive buying behavior is driven by price, low maintenance costs, and product quality.

Shopping is usually a necessity when it comes to food and clothing, but it can also be a release from stress and we often talk of "retail therapy" as a euphemism for buying what we want rather than what we need. Shopping in the extreme can become a compulsion for many people in the same way that they become dependent on other behavior, such as hobbies, exercise, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco. The team points out that shopping addiction can have as devastating effect on people's lives as any other kind of compulsive behavior including general mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, damage to relationships, and even legal problems.

New insights into how brand addiction and compulsive shopping arise, such as the present, work could help guide counseling and even treatments for people who have a problem with this form of addiction. They discuss the problem cycle where by the emotional urge to shop arises, the excitement of anticipation, followed by preparation and then the purchase, and finally buyer's remorse or guilt where the shopper perceives a problem and ultimately feels the need to shop again after coming down from the shopping high and experiencing the negative emotions.