SYMBOLIC MEANINGS OF GOODS AS DETERMINANTS OF IMPULSE BUYING BEHAVIOUR : SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

A study of whether impulsive and excessive buying can be understood as attempts to bolster self-image, comparing excessive buyers with ordinary consumers, and using interview surveys, shopping diaries and experiments.

Key Points from the Research

"I shop, therefore I am" has become the stereotype of modern consumerism. Interlinked social and economic changes in Britain over the last two decades, such as dramatic increases in disposable income and credit facilities, have produced a different climate in which individuals make consumer choices. The traditional economic and consumer behaviour models assume a "rational", discerning, thoughtful consumer, who gathers information strategically and buys goods according to functional cost-benefit considerations. However, this view has been challenged, particularly in the context of widening consumer choices. Consumer goods play an increasingly stronger psychological role in people's lives because they can and do function as material symbols of who a person is and who they would like to be.

Buying goods in order to bolster one's self-image is probably a motivation that plays some role in most buying behaviour, but it might be particularly important when people engage in non-planned "spur of the moment" purchases. Such impulsive buys, without careful deliberation and prior intent, are often later regretted. Although most people experience the occasional lapse of judgement in purchasing, in an extreme form it can result in excessive buying behaviour. This affliction, more commonly labelled "shopping addiction" or "compulsive buying", affects an estimated 2 to 5 per cent of adults in developed Western economies, including Britain, and can leave sufferers severely distressed and financially crippled.

Current explanations of impulsive and excessive buying in economics, marketing and psychology fail to give convincing accounts of why some goods, such as clothes, are bought on impulse more frequently than others, such as basic kitchen equipment. The main aim of this project was to examine whether impulsive and excessive buying can be understood as attempts to bolster self-image. Excessive buyers were compared with ordinary customers (matched for socio-economic status and other demographic characteristics) in a mail survey, and a smaller number of respondents in both groups also took part in an experiment, an in- depth interview and a shopping diary study. The findings of these linked studies support four main conclusions:

• Some types of consumer goods make more likely impulse purchases than others, and those which were reported most frequently - clothes, jewellery, ornaments - are closely linked to self-image and appearance. This finding challenges standard economic and psychological accounts, which see impulsive behaviour as a general overweighing of short-term gratification ("I want that dress now") relative to longer-term concerns ("I will have to pay the bill later and I am already in debt"), irrespective of the consumer good in question. The proposal that consumers' impulsivity differs according to type of consumer good was also supported by the experimental study, which elicited "discount rates". Having to wait for something a person wants, like a new dress, entails a psychological cost, and the discount rate measures how much compensation a person would want to make up for the delay in obtaining the good. By using vouchers for different types of shop (e.g. selling clothing, body care products), the experiment showed that discount rates differ according to consumer good, and that consumers want more compensation to wait for goods often bought on impulse. For instance, discount rates for clothes ("high impulse" goods) were higher than for body care products ("low impulse" goods).
• Secondly, "high impulse" goods are bought for different reasons than "low impulse" goods. For "low impulse" goods, functional motivations are most important - consumers are concerned with whether the purchase is good value for money, and whether it is practical or useful (i.e. they are "rational decision-makers"). For "high impulse" goods, however, psychological buying motivations become more powerful than price and usefulness - consumers buy because the purchase "puts me in a better mood", "makes me feel more like the person I want to be" and "expresses what is unique about me". Thus, intending to bolster one's self-image and mood is particularly salient in impulse buying. But this aim is often not achieved. Consumers reported that they regret their impulse purchases more than planned buys, and regret was more likely to occur when shoppers had explicitly bought to improve their self-image.
• Thirdly, excessive (or "compulsive") shoppers differed from ordinary consumers in a number of ways. They were more motivated to buy in order to bolster their self-image, and they reported greater "gaps" between how they see themselves (actual self) and how they wish to be (ideal self). They held stronger materialistic values, believing that acquiring material goods is a major route towards success, identity and happiness. They did more impulse buying and they regretted it more. This suggests that there is a continuum from ordinary to excessive impulse buying, with self-image concerns one of the major underlying motivations for this behaviour.
• Finally, a causal model was tested, which states that buying behaviour and motivations can be predicted from a person's self-discrepancies - "gaps" between actual and ideal self - if they have highly materialistic values (i.e. believe that material goods help them compensate by bringing them closer to their ideal selves). Those with big self-discrepancies, but low materialistic tendencies might instead turn to other compensation strategies, such as alcoholism, eating disorders or excessive exercising. The model found moderate to strong support. For materialistic consumers, larger self-discrepancies were moderately linked to more impulse buying and more substantially linked to greater concerns with self-image and mood improvement. Most importantly, large self-discrepancies in combination with materialistic values were a strong predictor of proneness to become an excessive buyer. Links were stronger for women than men, suggesting that shopping still constitutes a more culturally available and socially acceptable activity for women. This interpretation is strengthened by the finding that a respondent classified as an "excessive shopper" in the mail survey was over two-and-a-half times as likely to be a woman rather than a man. Other compensation strategies, such as excessive sports or "going out to the pub" may be more available and socially sanctioned for men.

These findings have theoretical and practical implications. Existing rational choice models in economics and consumer research need to be either changed or extended to take into account the social psychological motivation of bolstering aspects of self. Standard treatments for "compulsive" shopping - such as debt counselling and/or antidepressant drugs - are unlikely to lead to long-lasting therapeutic relief by themselves, if underlying motivations are not addressed.