Impulse buying studied for clues to stop compulsive shopping

Last Updated: Friday, June 8, 2007 | 3:33 PM ET

CBC News

University of Guelph researcher Sunghwan Yi is looking at the coping strategies shoppers use to control impulse purchases.

Once identified, those strategies could help the one per cent of North Americans who are compulsive shoppers, the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies researcher said in a release Friday. Compulsive shopping can cause feelings of depression and anxiety that can be temporarily relieved by another purchase.

The researcher is studying the ways people limit impulse shopping because it can turn into compulsive shopping.

"If we can reduce the number of impulse purchases, we can start to reduce the onset of compulsive behaviour,” Yi said.

Impulse purchase highs are often followed by feelings of regret, guilt and shame, which the shoppers try to justify or forget. They may even hide the evidence of their "inappropriate behaviour.”

Less impulsive shoppers are more open about their behaviour, and may use preventive measures, such as taking a friend along to talk them out of impulse purchases, he said.

Studies have been done on compulsive shopping, but there has been little research on the much more common impulsive buyer.

Yi will ask consumers who have recently made a major impulse buy how they felt at the time, and how they felt later. They'll then be asked about how they coped with negative feelings.

He'll proceed to do a large survey to determine which coping strategies are used most often, and which strategies prevent additional purchases.