Contact: Dr. Helga Dittmar
Tel. (01273) 606755
Fax. (01273) 678466
EMail h.e.dittmar@sussex.ac.uk
Impulse-buying is increasingly identified as an issue, both by retail managers who seek to site goods where they are most likely to be bought and by shoppers who find difficulty in controlling their spending and managing their budgets. The explanations of impulse-buying currently available in economics, marketing theory and psychology fail to give convincing accounts of why some goods, such as clothes, are bought on impulse more frequently than others, such as garden tools. This study examines whether impulse-buying can be understood in terms of people's feelings about themselves, as an attempt to bolster self-image and personal identity.
The project combines three linked studies. The first surveys the shopping attitudes and decision- making of a sample of 400 compulsive and normal shoppers. A subsample of 50 compulsive and 50 normal shoppers will then take part in two further studies. The first of these will examine how preferences for items which are typically impulse-bought and those which are not change over time. The second will study in detail reasons for impulse purchases and the actual process of shopping among these respondents through in-depth interviews and shopping diaries.
The research has strong practical implications for the development of marketing strategies and of therapy for compulsive shoppers. It also has wider implications for our understanding of consumer psychology and how purchasing decisions relate to our conceptions of the kind of person we are.
HELGA DITTMAR is Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sussex. Her most recent book is The Social Psychology of Material Possessions, (Wheatsheaf, 1992).
JANE BEATTIE is a Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex. She has published extensively on the factors influencing people's decisions.
OTHER RESEARCHERS:
Susanne Friese, University of Sussex.
Papers from this project
Gender Identity and Material Symbols: Objects and Decision Considerations in Impulse Purchases
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