Christmas shopping: excessive or compulsive?

Christmas is a time strongly linked to consumption, a time of year in which people allow themselves to make an extra expense.

The motivation to buy at Christmas is not born so much from need or pleasure (as it does in other periods), but is derived predominantly from the commitment to fulfill others. In other words, we buy gifts, decorations, nougat and lottery out of habit and out of social pressure.

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Christmas: a phenomenon associated with consumption

The French sociologist and philosopher Emile Durkheim, pointed out throughout his works the importance of ritual celebrations in integration and social cohesion. From this perspective, Christmas is accompanied by parties that reinforce beliefs, values ​​and, above all, commitment to the group, where the family is the main unit.

In this line, experts in neuroscience and neuromarketing highlight the role of the "emotional cloud" that permeates the environment at this time and that it plays a decisive role in encouraging purchasing behavior.

According to a study published by the British Medical Journal, the brain associates all kinds of related stimuli with Christmas to a false optimism and state of happiness in which businesses participate to encourage the consumption.

Thus, brands use the scents of chestnut, vanilla or cinnamon to set their premises, they play Christmas carols to transfer to the consumers to their childhood and decorate their spaces with lights and colors such as red and gold that are associated with wealth, power and delusion. All these signals, added to the advertising campaigns, for the purposes of the offers, the immediacy of the purchase on the Internet and the emotional meaning of Christmas, they constitute the perfect breeding ground for “getting out of hand” and spending sums of money that, many times, are above the previously planned budget.

Although Christmas is one of the periods of the year in which mass consumption occurs, it is also it is the ideal time for mental health problems such as compulsive shopping disorder to go unnoticed, an addiction problem that works in a very similar way to substance addiction.

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What are the differences between binge buying and compulsive buying?

It is important distinguish between compulsive buying that occurs in shopaholics and excessive buying that occurs during sales periods at Christmas.

A person's relationship to buying behavior can be more or less problematic. A healthy buyer is one who, in general, is able to modulate his desire to buy. Although on certain dates (such as Christmas, Valentine's Day or a birthday) you may exceed the expense or, although occasionally you can get carried away by their impulses, the healthy consumer is able to control himself and has a moderately functional life (purchases do not imply a restriction of his Liberty).

However, a pathological buyer (addicted) is one who is unable to curb his impulsiveness. You feel a strong loss of control over the desire to purchase a good or service and organize your life around the purchase.

Thus, the compulsive buyer has a relationship of dependence with the purchase, since he uses it as a means of compensation to face other problems that hide underneath this symptom (frequently anxiety, depression, eating disorders, etc.).

Thomas O'Guinn and Ronald J. Faber, expert psychologists on this subject, suggest a series of qualitative differences that separate a "healthy" consumer from a "pathological" consumer. These are the following.

1. Motivations

Healthy consumers purchase products for their functional benefits. For example, they buy food out of necessity, buy clothes to look their best, and give gifts to strengthen their relationships.

Addicts, for their part, buy goods and services due to the emotional effects associated with the buying process itself.. They feel pleasure, they avoid thinking about problems and feeling unpleasant emotions, they experience relief, they feel in company by interacting with the store staff and reinforcing their value by the fact of “being able” to acquire what they wish. Pathological consumers buy to buy with the sole objective of benefiting from the experience.

2. Control during the purchase process

Healthy shoppers tend to plan their purchases. They have an idea of ​​what they need or want to acquire and they go out in search of it. Although it is true that, sometimes, they are carried away by desire and impulse, in general, control and the ability to modulate spending predominate.

Compulsive shoppers, however, seize products in an uncontrolled, impulsive way, without measuring the consequences and spending, many times, money that they do not have (they often go into debt, ask for loans from the bank or steal from their relatives). During the buying process these people feel tremendously intense emotions, such as euphoria and pleasure.

3. The use of the products and the post-purchase consequences

At the end of the purchase of a product, healthy buyers are more or less satisfied with the function of the same and they either keep it and use it or give it back, which does not have great effects on an emotional level.

Compulsive shoppers often have powerful emotions that can be pleasant (such as a sense of worth) or unpleasant (such as shame or guilt), and in both cases, they tend to accumulate and hide them without actually using them. It is important to understand that these people do not seek to use the function of articles acquired, but the effects of going out to acquire it, that is, the purchase process, not the object and its function.

In the face of alarm signals, seek professional help

While excessive purchases can lead to a small hole in the wallet that lasts throughout certain dates such as Christmas, compulsive shopping is a serious psychological pathology that falls within impulse control disorders and that has great consequences at an intra-personal level (depression, very low self-esteem, deterioration of social relationships, job loss, etc.) and at an inter-personal level (debts, cheating, family problems, etc.).

If you think you may be suffering from impulse control disorder associated with shopping, do not hesitate to seek professional help. If you wish, you can find out about it on our website www.centrotap.es or send an email to [email protected]

Author: Laura Coronel Hernández, Health Psychologist and member of the TAP Center.

Bibliographic references:

• Hougaard, A., Lindberg, U., Arngrim, N., Larsson, H., Olesen, J., Amin, F.M., Ashina, M. and Haddock, B. (2015). Evidence of a Christmas spirit network in the brain: functional MRI study. British Medical Journal, 351: h6266. doi: 10.1136 / bmj.h6266
• O'Guinn, T. and Faber, R.J. (1989). Compulsive buying a phenomenological explanation. Journal of Consumer Research, 16: pp. 147 - 137.