Shopping addiction

[5] Although shopping addiction and compulsive purchase are conceptually different, they are interrelated and both are manifestations of the same problem: the lack of self-control when buying and to restrain impulses.

In cases of people with severe problems of shopping addiction, this remorse can lead to very deep feelings of blame and discomfort.

This is not about one's ordinary or unexpected spending making life difficult, but is an absolute inability to control the personal or family income in a rational way, and to discipline their buying, no matter how superfluous it is.

Those that ask for help only do it after years of suffering, when the addiction has caused very serious economic repercussion and has harmed the relationship with their family and social environment.

In addition to the severe cases of shopping addiction, an important part of consumers (between 30% and 50% of the population) have deficiencies with spending self-control or excessive purchases.

These generations are inclined to current trends of technology platforms like TikTok among others serve and they offer a place for consumers to follow and buy advertising products of their choice.

[17] More recent research shows that shopping addicts usually have feelings of leading an unsatisfactory and listless life, without any hope or excitement.

In these cases, by means of purchase, the addicts seek for a way of escape, a satisfaction, even if momentary to compensate and to bear the depressive feelings.

[18] Cole (1995) carried out research with a sample of 420 people and come to the conclusion that anxiety has an essential role in shopping addiction, as an antecedent or a triggering factor.

[citation needed] In another study, Valence (1988) revealed that as the level of anxiety rises, the possibility of developing shopping addiction grows.

[citation needed] Clinical research on the rate incidence of anxiety disorders in shopping addition also shows this relationship, although the percentage changes a lot: Shlosser (1994) 42%; McElroy (1994) 80%, and Christenson (1994) 50%.

[citation needed] Research carried out by Garcés and Salcedo in 2005, based on a sample of 253 young people,[19] concluded that the anxiety trait has a significant influence on shopping addiction but, by itself, is not determinant.

Others, from a psychoanalyst point of view, thought that it was a problem very similar to kleptomania and they related it to sexual repression to explain the high rate of incidence in women.

Since shopping is for many women one of their most usual activities, as obligation or as entertainment, it easily becomes an important mechanism of escape, facing other problems and ending up being an addiction.

Research carried out on people undergoing treatment, as well as on the general population[23] has revealed a negative correlation between age and addiction.

[25] Clinical approach: since ancient times, cases of people who bought in an uncontrolled way have been described, but the first relevant references to shopping addiction appear in the beginning of the twentieth century with Kraepelin and Bleuler.

[27] Psychosocial approach : Since the 1980s a significant increase in the number of people with important problems of lack of control in shopping and spending has been established.

Given the fact that this increase was parallel with the spreading of the values and behaviour of the consumer society, these disorders started to be considered as an individual manifestation of a general social problem.

A model taking this approach was one by Javier Garcés and Alejandro Saucedo,[28] who regard shopping addiction as "the tip of the iceberg” that is, the most intense manifestation of a general problem which affects, to a greater or lesser extent, a great deal of the population.

Another model is the one defended by Helga Ditmar, which could be classified as a mixed model, since she considers that shopping addiction problems are caused by the conjunction of two factors: a high level of materialism and a high discrepancy between the real self-concept (how the person sees themselves) and the ideal self-concept (how the person wishes to see themselves).

[12] Since people buying more than they need is usual and accepted, even the most excessive behaviour takes a long time before being considered pathological.

These specific questionnaires or tests are useful in the diagnosis and evaluation of shopping addiction problems, and to drive the therapies in a proper way.

This substance is supposed to be related to deficiencies in stimulus control, so that medicines like fluoxetine and fluvoxamine, which raise the level of serotonin in the brain, would be a pharmacological alternative to treat shopping addiction.

These techniques are effective in improving economic self-control and avoiding impulsive purchase and are generally included, one way or another, in all programmes of treatment.

(gear acquisition syndrome) has been used in internet forums and magazines for musicians, audio engineers and photographers to denote compulsive accumulation of technical equipment.

The acronym was coined by Steely Dan guitarist Walter Becker in a 1994 satirical Guitar Player magazine column titled "The Dreaded G.A.S.