You’ve probably often said to yourself, “This time I’ll only buy what I need!” But then you still go home with things that weren’t on your shopping list.
How can you prevent such impulse buying? A team from the Department of Psychology at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU), Bavaria, Germany, examines the problem in detail. The answer is not so simple, according to psychologist Dr. Anand Krishna. What matters is what type of person you are – a pleasure seeker or a person who focuses on security.
Dr. Krishna and his colleagues, Sofia Reed and Marie Meixner, published the results of their study in the journal PLOS ONE.
Sometimes we buy something spontaneous, out of pure curiosity. For example, if it’s something you haven’t tried before. In other cases, we just want to pamper ourselves. It can be a chocolate bar, a beautiful decoration for the living room or a great pair of new jeans.
According to psychologists, “pleasure people” are spontaneous in nature. They make decisions spontaneously and more and more often a relatively small impulse is needed, after which it would be difficult to say “no” to each other during another spontaneous purchase. In some cases, a note in the wallet that says “Stop!” Or something similar may be helpful.
But the survey data show interesting results. Even security-minded people may be prone to impulsive purchases. If they are in a good mood, they are just as tempted to indulge in something good as those who are constantly looking for pleasure. The big difference is that no matter what they end up doing, it takes them longer to make the final decision. The results are from a total of 250 participants.
The goods that certain customers would gladly buy within a day can stay for the next week, month or year. This is suggested by the results of the psychological analysis of psychologists. The reason seems to depend on the emotional state in which customers enter the store, and not on whether they are more willing to enjoy themselves and be rewarded or not, writes puls.bg.
The question of what security-oriented customers do when they have to act under the pressure of time is still open. For example, if they do not want to buy a bar of chocolate, because in the morning they were standing on the scales, which showed two kilograms on top. Maybe they still reach for the candies when they have to hurry to the cash register because there isn’t enough time to think.
Deepening market disorders
Research shows that obsessive shopping behavior is often accompanied by depression, anxiety and other negative emotions. Indeed, people affected by obsessive shopping often report uncomfortable stress, which is alleviated, at least temporarily, by shopping.
Understanding obsessive shopping
The characteristics of intrusive shopping include:
Concerns about shopping for unnecessary items.
You spend a lot of time researching wanted items and / or shopping for unnecessary items.
Difficulty opposing the purchase of unnecessary items.
Financial difficulties due to uncontrolled shopping.
Problems at work, school or at home due to uncontrolled shopping.
