Within the past few years, research and anecdotal reports of compulsive buying in Australia, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Korea, India, Ireland, Slovakia, and Spain have been published. Is overshopping a new phenomenon in these countries? Is it on the rise? While there’s probably insufficient historical data to answer the first question, preliminary evidence suggests an affirmative answer to the second.
Two nationally representative surveys, one conducted in 1991 and the other in 2001, investigated compulsive buying in Germany. The results showed a marked increase in compulsive buying over that decade. Michael Neuner, Gerhard Raab, and Lucia Reisch, who published “Compulsive Buying in Maturing Consumer Societies: An Empirical Re-Inquiry” in the Journal of Economic Psychology (25: 4, 509), suggest that compulsive buying can hap-pen anywhere that consumers are exposed to the influences of Western con-sumer societies.
Carrie Rattle is a Principal at BehavioralCents.com, a website for women focused on mind and money behaviors. She has worked in the financial services industry for 20+ years and hopes to inspire women to better prepare themselves for financial independence.