Making purchases, or doing so often, does not pose any risk or problem. The reason is that it is a basic activity to subsist and acquire necessary goods for daily life. However, conflict arises when there is an emotional circumstance that incites the person in question to fall into consumerism. Due to certain specific reasons, they may experience a behavioral disorder that leads to abusive behavior when making purchases and spending money. This fact can be accentuated on special dates like those approaching in this last part of the year. Days are coming when people will increase their number of impulsive purchases due to celebrations such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.
Impulsive Shopping: What It Is and How to Detect It
Impulsive purchases are those made automatically or almost unconsciously due to a person’s emotional impulse. They occur when the person feels an uncontrollable urge to acquire a specific product and ends up buying it without any logical reason. These types of purchases involve low-priced items or those based on emotional buying. For example, chocolates, candies, and all kinds of products found just before the checkout counters in supermarkets. Toys and items based on hobbies and pastimes are also part of this.
Currently, impulsive shopping has increased due to the possibility of making online purchases. The large number of e-commerce portals and the high volume of communications have created a landscape of advertising saturation. Consequently, users have more freedom to choose what they want, how they want it, where they want it, and when they want to receive it. This new context has created needs that did not exist before, based on the desire for things that people do not vitally need. That is, they are based on consumerism.
Celebrations like Black Friday and Cyber Monday foster this attitude, aiming to increase the number of impulsive purchases. This is because these are two dates when items have much more noticeable price reductions than during the rest of the year. As a result, people take advantage to acquire desired products, items they have been waiting to obtain for a long time, or to get a head start on Christmas shopping. This way, they might save more money, but they end up losing it by overspending.
Impulsive Shopping Fosters Addiction
The phenomenon of shopping addiction is driven by an uncontrollable urge to buy compulsively. When doing so, the person feels good, satisfied, pleased, and forgets their problems and daily stress. In contrast, when they don’t shop, they experience discomfort, anxiety, depression, and a whole series of psychological symptoms that ultimately affect their personality and usual behavior.
Impulsive shopping can foster addiction. When a person is unable to realize how much money they have spent, they lose control over everything they acquire and sooner or later recognize that it has gotten out of hand. Even after this acceptance, they continue shopping non-stop because they cannot avoid it. More or less gradually, this process of suffering from a behavioral disorder involves an abuse of shopping, transforms into a dependence on it, and finally becomes an addiction.
Consequences of Impulsive Shopping
Depending on the person’s profile and situation, the consequences can vary. And suffering from shopping addiction does not mean that one must experience all the known effects. However, the most common and frequent ones are the following:
- Economic harm from overspending
- Inability to pay bills
- Ending up taking out bank loans
- Worsening of family, work, and social environment
- Loss of productivity
- Abandonment of social relationships
- Can uncover latent psychiatric disorders and obsessive-compulsive behaviors
Although most people have control over their own impulses, sometimes situations arise where it is difficult to maintain self-control. And this fact is much more complicated when emotions or genetic or behavioral factors are involved. It is in these types of cases when individuals can be more vulnerable, thus falling into temptation and subsequently suffering from shopping addiction. It is estimated that today, 5% of the population could have some type of pattern that would facilitate the onset of an impulsive shopping addiction disorder.
Symptoms of a Shopping Addict
To detect shopping addiction or a possible onset of the illness, it is very important that both friends and family pay attention to the person in question and regularly monitor their behavior. If they habitually and recurrently experience symptoms such as the following, it could be a sign that they are beginning to develop a dependency disorder. This could worsen if no remedy is applied or prevention is not taken:
- Suffering anxiety every time money is not spent
- Experiencing dissatisfaction after buying any product
- Feeling irritable and experiencing frequent mood swings
- Inability to control oneself and trying to stop shopping
- Feeling guilty after spending so much money
- Trouble sleeping peacefully due to worries
CCAdicciones is a center that can help you stop impulsive shopping addiction. Contact us and a professional therapist will recommend the best treatment.
