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Buyer behavior

Last updated: 7 April, 2023

Types of buyer behavior

Buyer behavior patterns.

Model of buyer behavior

Buyer behavior analysis

Checkout our sales pipeline templates freebies.

Buyer behavior refers to the decision and acts people undertake to buy products or services for individual or group use. It’s synonymous with the term “consumer buying behavior,” which often applies to individual customers in contrast to businesses.

Buyer behavior is the driving force behind any marketing process. Understanding why and how people decide to purchase this or that product or why they are so loyal to one particular brand is the number one task for companies that strive for improving their business model and acquiring more customers. 

Buyer behavior is always determined by how involved a client is in their decision to buy a product or service and how risky it is. The higher the product price, the higher the risk, the higher the customer’s involvement in purchase decisions. Based on these determinants, four types of consumer buyer behavior are distinguished:

Complex buying behavior

This type is also called extensive. The customer is highly involved in the buying process and thorough research before the purchase due to the high degree of economic or psychological risk. Examples of this type of buying behavior include purchasing expensive goods or services such as a house, a car, an education course, etc.

Dissonance-reducing buying behavior

Like complex buying behavior, this type presupposes lots of involvement in the buying process due to the high price or infrequent purchase. People find it difficult to choose between brands and are afraid they might regret their choice afterward (hence the word ‘dissonance’). 

As a rule, they buy goods without much research based on convenience or available budget. An example of dissonance-reducing buying behavior may be purchasing a waffle maker. In this case, a customer won’t think much about which model to use, chousing between a few brands available. 

Habitual buying behavior

This type of consumer buying behavior is characterized by low involvement in a purchase decision. A client sees no significant difference among brands and buys habitual goods over a long period. An example of habitual buying behavior is purchasing everyday products.

Variety seeking behavior

In this case, a customer switches among brands for the sake of variety or curiosity, not dissatisfaction, demonstrating a low level of involvement. For example, they may buy soap without putting much thought into it. Next time, they will choose another brand to change the scent. 

Each consumer may have unique buying habits. Still, there are typical tendencies, which allows distinguishing the following buyer behavior patterns:

Place of purchase

If customers have access to several stores, they are not always loyal to one place. So even if all items are available in one outlet, they may divide their purchases among several shops.

Items purchased

There are two things to consider: the type of the product customers purchase and its quantity. As a rule, people buy necessity items in bulk. In contrast, luxury items are more likely to be purchased in small quantities and not frequently. The amount of goods people buy is influenced by such factors: 

• Product durability
• Product availability
• Product price
• Buyer’s purchasing power 
• Number of customers for whom the product is intended

The analysis of a buyer’s shopping cart may bring many valuable insights about buyer behavior.

Time and frequency of purchase

With the development of e-commerce , purchases have become only a few clicks away. Anyway, marketers should understand how often and at what time of the year or day people tend to buy more goods. The product purchase frequency may depend on the following factors:

• Product type
• Customer’s lifestyle
• Product necessity
• Customer’s traditions and customs

Method of purchase

People buy goods in different ways: some go to the store, while others prefer ordering items online. Some pay cash, while others use a credit card. Among customers who buy goods in online stores, some pay on delivery, while others are ready to pay right after they place an order. The way customers choose to purchase products tells a lot about their buyer persona .

Model of consumer buying behavior

The buyer behavior model is a structured step-by-step process. Under the influence of marketing stimuli (product, price, place, and promotion) and environmental factors (economic, technological, political, cultural), a customer understands the need to make a purchase.

The decision-making process they undergo afterward is affected by their characteristics, such as their beliefs, values, and motivation, resulting in the final decision to either buy or not to buy. 

Most buyers go through several stages when making a purchase decision:

1. Need recognition

At the first stage, the buyer recognizes that there is a need for a product or service. For instance, they might realize that, since their company is growing, manual email outreach is no longer effective, so they need an email automation solution .

2. Information search

After understanding the need for a product or service, the buyer starts looking for information. They might obtain it from different sources (friends, commercials, mass media). For example, a prospect may start browsing email automation solutions, read reviews, etc.

3. Evaluation of alternatives

Once all the necessary information has been gathered, the buyer starts to evaluate a choice. They might compare key features and pricing, looking for advantages of one tool over all others.

4. Purchase decision

After evaluation, the buyer makes a purchase decision. For example, they start their free trial or purchase a paid plan. 

5. Post-purchase evaluation

After purchasing the product or service, the buyer assesses whether it has met their expectations. At this stage, they might also leave an online review about the purchase or share their feedback with subscribers, colleagues, or friends. 

There are cases, however, when some stages of the decision-making process are skipped. For example, the customer already knows a lot about a product and does not need to search for information. Another situation is when the buyer might see a product in the store and decide to buy it impulsively. Besides, there are situations when, after evaluating alternatives, the customer goes back to the information search step.

To offer relevant products and services to the target audience, marketers should analyze what and how people buy. Companies adhere to several ways of monitoring consumer buying behavior:

Using computer software

Computer software provides companies with valuable information about the customers’ purchase experience. This allows analyzing what products or services are preferable among certain groups of buyers, how the customers’ location influences their purchase habits, etc.

Analyzing customers’ reviews

Another way of analyzing buyer behavior is to study the customer’s feedback. Online reviews can often reveal more than just people’s feelings about the purchase. They might also share some information about how they choose items or the way they prefer buying goods. 

Conducting online surveys

Some companies also conduct online surveys , which gives them an opportunity to research the buyer behavior at any angle they need. Surveys allow requesting direct information about what people like to buy, what product qualities they value the most, what determines their purchase decision, and so on.

The analysis of buyer behavior tendencies will help companies find the right marketing strategies to attract potential customers and convert them.

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Buying behavior: What it is + Complete Guide

Understanding consumer behavior is important for marketing and commercial success. Understanding buying behavior is critical whether you are a business owner, marketer, or simply someone interested in human psychology. 

In this blog, we’ll get into the details of buying behavior, why it matters, and how you can use this information to improve your marketing tactics. 

Let’s go on an adventure to discover the wonders of consumer decision-making!

Content Index

What is buying behavior?

• Importance of Buying Behavior

Four types of buying behavior

Factors affecting buying behavior, five stages of consumer behavior.

Buying behavior is the series of actions and interactions a consumer performs before, during, and after a commercial transaction. Experts usually study this process in market research and business owners to detect areas of opportunity that allow them to improve their processes and how they market their products or services.

Consumers usually develop well-defined customer behavior patterns that, when analyzed, yield highly valuable insights that allow decision-making based on data.

Importance of buying behavior

Marketing campaigns have a large impact on purchasing decisions. Decoding consumer buying behavior and building products based on it will guarantee successful products and services in any industry.

Buying behavior defined:

• How a person thinks while choosing a product.
• What is influencing people?
• How do their friends and family influence the decision?
• Reason for discarding a particular product.

And if a product maker knows the above, they can easily figure out the trick to sell their product.

Four buying behaviors are common while making purchases. These purchase behavior patterns depend on brand or product differences and involvement. Let’s take a closer look at each one:

1. Extended decision-making.

It is also called complex buying behavior. This buying behavior can be observed for expensive products, which involve high investment and a group of people. It involves in-depth research as the customer won’t buy these kinds of high-end products daily, and high monetary risk is involved.

2. Limited decision-making.

Limited decision-making is buyer decision-making that is used when purchasing products that require a moderate amount of time and effort, where the buyer compares models and brands before making a final choice for the purchase decision.

3. Habitual buying behavior.

Habitual buying is the buying behavior of buyers/consumers where they make repeat purchases several times of an already known brand without the process of high involvement and decision. The product here is perceived as a commodity and doesn’t provide much difference from its rivals or competitors.

4. Variety-seeking buying behavior.

Variety-seeking or variety-seeking buying behavior is when a buyer desires to search for an alternative product even if the buyer is satisfied with a current product. In this case, the cost of switching products is mostly low, so the consumer may perhaps simply move from one brand to another.

Several factors affect purchase decisions. Businesses must understand these characteristics to create efficient marketing strategies and meet target audience needs. Key buying factors include:

• Psychological factors. 

This is one of the major influences on customer buying behavior. These factors are powerful enough to influence a buying decision for a buyer but are very difficult to measure.

Factors like motivation to buy a product, perception of the other people towards the product, learning about the product (pros and cons), Attitudes and beliefs of previous consumers and other people also have an impact on influencing a buying decision

• Social factors. 

We are social beings, and we live around many people and influence each other’s buying behavior. We try to imitate other people and wish to be socially accepted. Hence their buying behavior gets influenced by other people around them. Family, reference groups, roles, status, etc., are some factors that influence buying behavior.

• Cultural factors.

We are associated with a set of values and ideologies that belong to a particular community. Whenever a person comes from a particular community, his/her behavior is highly influenced by the culture relating to that particular community, influencing the buying behavior. Culture, subcultures, castes, religion, and other factors influence buying behavior culturally.

• Personal factors.

Factors that are personal to the buyers influence their buying behavior. These personal factors always differ from person to person, thereby producing different perceptions and consumer behavior. Some factors that influence buying behavior are age, personal beliefs, income, lifestyle, etc.

Consumer behavior can be explained by a five-step model that shows how people make decisions about what to buy and in what order. Let’s examine each step:

Stage 1: Problem recognition.

The buying behavior starts with the buyer having requirements with the product/service and with the problems they had with the previous product/service, which was either offered to them or bought by them. This is visible or obvious in several ways from the PV of a seller.

For example: 

In some cases, the buyer might not know the product/service they are looking for or are unsure of the requirements they want in the product/service. 

In some cases, the buyer knows what they are looking for in the product/service and are well prepared with the requirements they want to have in the product/service.

Ask yourself these questions to understand buying behavior:

• What scenarios or incidents will push people to look for your offerings?
• What are the different ways to create a demand for your products?
• How do you get people to realize a need you can fulfill?

Stage 2: Information gathering.

This might seem simple at first, but as soon as any potential buyer realizes they have a problem/issue with the service/product they use, the number one tool they turn to is Google. 

This is where the brand comes in, targeting the buyers through SEO and ensuring the brand come into the sight of the right buyers whenever they google their problems/issues with a product.

For example:

For an office worker whose computer is slowing down, in this scenario, the office worker will most likely reach his colleagues. If the issue is not resolved, he will revert to Google to find different ways to get the issue resolved.

Stage 3: Evaluating solutions.

After researching, buyers typically shortlist brands or products for their needs. At this stage,  the buyers look at specific solutions to their problems regarding the product they seek. 

The objective here is to position your product as the best choice for the shopper. One of the best ways is to allow the consumers to ask questions through Q&A or FAQ on the brands’ website.

Someone dealing with a slow computer would decide whether to hire an IT expert, purchase software or buy a new one.

Stage 4: Purchase phase.

All the efforts have led buyers to choose your brand at the purchase phase of the customer journey. It is where the buyer is ready to get the credit card and buy the product.

It’s an excellent position, but don’t get in a hurry or be too happy. 

You can still lose the prospect if you don’t offer them a smooth checkout experience. Always strive to make the process as quick and painless as possible for the buyer or consumer.

Stage 5: The Post-purchase phase.

Congratulations! You have now converted a looker into a buyer who is now a customer. Now is the time to gather feedback regarding the customer’s onboarding experience and their experience with the product and services offered, and ask them to leave a review and rating on the Google platform. 

This will help increase incoming traffic and help in optimizing SEO. The more the lookers, the more the chances of converting them into a buyer! Online surveys are the most efficient method of conducting buyer behavior studies. 

You can create a survey using survey software and send it to your target audience. You can also customize the survey flow to ask only relevant questions to respondents.

LEARN ABOUT: Consumer Decision Journey

Buying behavior is a complicated and multifaceted component of customer psychology critical to creating marketing strategies. 

Businesses can obtain a competitive advantage and long-term customer connections by diving into the psychological, social, personal, and situational elements influencing consumer decision-making. With this complete guide, you now know how to handle the complicated world of purchasing behavior and use its power to make your business successful.

QuestionPro CX can help you learn more about your potential customers and conduct research studies. Connect with us if you need help designing a survey and collecting data. We’d be happy to help!

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The consumer’s mood, social context, time, and purchase purpose affect their buying behavior. Your personality describes how other people see you. Market researchers believe people buy things to improve their self-esteem.

Customer behavior prediction has many methods. Primary or secondary research methods include internet actions, feedback analysis, focus groups, conversational marketing, and more.

When making a purchase, a buyer is surrounded by four important factors: the goods, the price, the promotion, and the sales channel.

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Consumer Buyer Behaviour Definition

Buyer behaviour has been defined as “a process, which through inputs and their use though process and actions leads to satisfaction of needs and wants” (Enis, 1974, p.228). Consumer buying behaviour has numerous factors as a part of it which are believed to have some level of effect on the purchasing decisions of the customers.

Alternatively, consumer buying behaviour “refers to the buying behaviour of final consumers, both individuals and households, who buy goods and services for personal consumption” (Kumar, 2010, p.218). From marketers’ point of view issues specific aspects of consumer behaviour that need to be studied include the reasons behind consumers making purchases, specific factors influencing the patterns of consumer purchases, analysis of changing factors within the society and others.

Example of previous research used to define consumer behaviour

Moreover, the following popular definitions have been proposed for the term of consumer buyer behaviour:

• According to Blackwell et al (2006) consumer buying behaviour is itself is a complex, dynamic issue which cannot be defined easily and commonly. Therefore, the concept of consumer buying behaviour has been defined in different ways by different researchers.
• The definition formed by Solomon et al (1995) describes consumer buying behaviour as a process of choosing, purchasing, using and disposing of products or services by the individuals and groups in order to satisfy their needs and wants. Similar definition of consumer buying behaviour is offered by Schiffman and Kanuk (2000) in which they describe it as behaviour that consumers express when they select and purchase the products or services using their available resources in order to satisfy their needs and desires.
• Consumer buying behaviour is defined by Stallworth (2008) as a set of activities which involves the purchase and use of goods and services which resulted from the customers’ emotional and mental needs and behavioural responses. It is further stated by Gabbot and Hogg (1998) that the process may contain different activities and stages.

Although the definitions given above are various, they all lead to common view that consumer buying behaviour is a process of selecting, purchasing and disposing of goods and services according to the needs and wants of the consumers. However, there is a general consensus among the researchers and academics that this process is subject to continual change over time as the purchase characteristics of the customers change due to their physical and psychological needs.

In the mean time, Kotler and Keller (2011) highlight the importance of understanding consumer buying behaviour and the ways how the customers choose their products and services can be extremely important for manufacturers as well as service providers as this provides them with competitive advantage over its competitors in several aspects. For example, they may use the knowledge obtained through studying the consumer buying behaviour to set their strategies towards offering the right products and services to the right audience of customers reflecting their needs and wants effectively.

Another valuable argument is provided by Egen (2007) on the importance of understanding the consumer behaviour. According to the author, better awareness of consumer buying behaviour is a positive contribution to the country’s economic state. The author further argues that the quality of goods and products are exceptionally good in countries where buying behaviour of consumers is well understood. This in turn increased the competitiveness of the products and services in international market increasing the export potential of the country. Meanwhile, high quality of domestic products and services lead to sophisticated domestic customers’ base (Blackwell et al, 2006).

In addition to efforts of better understanding the consumers’ buying behaviour, companies also engage in advertising and promotion activities to influence the consumers’ purchasing decision. However, when they are engaging in such types of activities, they need to consider other external factors such as the overall economic conditions of the country, politics, technology and ethnic culture all of which are beyond the control of both the company and consumer Lancaster et al (2002).

To sum up all the arguments stated above, it is clear that better understanding the consumer buying behaviour through studying and identifying their needs leads to huge long term benefits to the businesses. However, as stated by Kotler et al (2005) it is essential to mention that despite the great efforts to learn and understand the buying behaviour of consumers, it is very difficult to identify the exact reasons why a consumer purchases and prefers one product or service over another one. This is because consumers sometimes make purchasing decisions based on their emotional beliefs which they even themselves are not well aware of.

Blackwell, R., Miniard, P. and Engel, J. (2006) “Consumer behavior”, Mason: Thompson

Egan, J. (2007) “Marketing Communications”, London: Cengage Learning

Enis, B.M. (1974) “Marketing Principles: The Management Process”

Gabbott, M. and Hogg, G. (1998).  “Consumers and services”, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Kotler, P. and Keller, K. (2011) “Marketing Management”(14 th edition), London: Pearson Education

Kumar, P. (2010) “Marketing of Hospitality & Tourism Services” Tata McGraw-Hill Education

Schiffman, L., Hansen H. and Kanuk L. (2007) “Consumer Behaviour: A European Outlook”, London: Pearson Education

Solomon, M. (1995) “Consumer Behaviour” (3 rd edition), New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Stallworth, P. (2008) “Consumer behaviour and marketing strategic”, online, pp.9.

3.1 Understanding Consumer Markets and Buying Behavior

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• 1 Define consumer buying behavior.
• 2 Explain the nature of the buyer’s black box.
• 3 Describe how consumer behavior is characterized into types.

Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying Behavior Defined

How many buying decisions did you make today? Perhaps you stopped on the way to work or class to buy a soft drink or coffee, went to the grocery store on the way home to get bread or milk, or ordered something online. You likely make buying decisions nearly every day and probably don’t give most of those decisions much thought. But the way you make those decisions is significant for marketers, because if they can understand why you buy what you buy and when you buy it, they can use that information to boost revenue.

Consumer buying behavior refers to the decisions and actions people undertake to buy products or services for personal use. In other words, it’s the actions you take before buying a product or service, and as you will see, many factors influence that behavior. You and all other consumers combine to make up the consumer market .

The Buyer’s Black Box

It stands to reason that the hundreds of millions of people who make up the global consumer market don’t all buy the same products and services. Why do certain people prefer different items than others? The answer lies in the factors that influence consumer buying behavior. One model of consumer buying behavior is what’s known as the buyer’s black box , which is named as such because little is known about what goes on in the human mind. It’s also known as the stimulus-response model.

As illustrated in the model shown in Figure 3.2 , consumer buying behavior is based on stimuli coming from a variety of sources—from marketers in terms of the 4Ps (product, price, promotion, and place) , as well as from environmental stimuli, such as economic factors, legal/political factors, and technological and cultural factors.

These stimuli go into your “black box,” which consists of two parts: buyer characteristics such as beliefs and attitudes, motives, perceptions, and values, and the buyer decision-making process, which is covered later in the chapter. Your response is the outcome of the thinking that takes place in that black box. What will you buy, where, when, how often, and how much?

Types of Consumer Buying Behavior

Buying behavior is not influenced solely by the external environment. It’s also determined by your level of involvement in a purchase and the amount of risk involved in the purchase. There are four types of consumer buying behavior, as shown in Figure 3.3 .

Complex buying behavior occurs when you make a significant or expensive purchase, like buying a new car. Because you likely don’t buy a new car frequently, you’re highly involved in the buying decision, and you probably research different vehicles or talk with friends or family before reaching your decision. By that time, you’re likely convinced that there’s a significant difference among cars, and you’ve developed your own unique set of criteria that helps you decide on your purchase.

Dissonance-reducing buying behavior occurs when you’re highly involved in a purchase but see little difference among brands. Let’s say you’re replacing the flooring in your kitchen with ceramic tile—another expensive, infrequent purchase. You might think that all brands of ceramic tile in a certain price range are “about the same,” so you might shop around to see what’s available, but you’ll probably buy rather quickly, perhaps as a result of a good price or availability. However, after you’ve made your purchase, you may experience post-purchase dissonance (also known as buyer’s remorse) when you notice some disadvantages of the tile you purchased or hear good things about a brand you didn’t purchase.

Habitual buying behavior has low involvement in the purchase decision because it’s often a repeat buy, and you don’t perceive much brand differentiation. Perhaps you usually buy a certain brand of organic milk, but you don’t have strong brand loyalty. If your regular brand isn’t available at the store or another brand is on sale, you’ll probably buy a different brand.

Variety-seeking buying behavior has the lowest customer involvement because brand switching is your norm. You may not be unhappy with your last purchase of tortilla chips, but you simply want to try something new. It’s a matter of brand switching for the sake of variety rather than because of dissatisfaction with your previous purchase.

Link to Learning

The 4ps and consumer behavior.

Watch this short, humorous 4Ps video as a way to help you remember the concept. This video also includes several examples of target markets and how a marketer might respond.

Consumer behavior is an important marketing topic, and depending on the marketing program at your institution, you may have the opportunity to take a consumer behavior course and learn more about the topics covered above. Studying consumer behavior is important in marketing because it will teach you how to best know your customer, an integral aspect to marketing a product or service. You can also watch this selfLearn-en video to get a stronger grasp of consumer behavior.

As mentioned, environmental factors have an impact on consumer behavior. Can you think of a recent environmental influence that has had a significant impact? The coronavirus pandemic has probably been the most influential in recent years, and for many reasons! We still have a lot to learn about the impacts of the pandemic, and new information is being released daily about changing human behavior and the impact on marketing. For example, in this Google article, the author shares a cultural anthropologist’s insights for understanding consumer behavior and how it relates to three core needs all people experience—self-care, social connection, and identity—and how these needs correlate to recent YouTube video trends. Learn about how marketers can respond to this trend.

Continually trying to understand environmental influences will keep you on the cutting edge and ahead of the competition. It’s a great practice to always be looking for the latest information so that you can shift your strategies as needed. Bain & Company is an example of one company that wanted to understand how the pandemic changed consumer behavior. The company ran a survey in 2021 to better understand the impact of the pandemic, and it found five trends from the data.

A survey from Accenture , one of the top-ranked consulting firms in the world, found that the pandemic caused 50 percent of consumers to evaluate their purpose and what’s important to them. Read more about the findings in this article.

Always be looking for information to be the best marketer you can be!

Knowledge Check

It’s time to check your knowledge on the concepts presented in this section. Refer to the Answer Key at the end of the book for feedback.

• Dissonance-reducing buying behavior
• Variety-seeking buying behavior
• Complex buying behavior
• Habitual buying behavior
• technological
• Product choice
• Brand choice
• Social stimuli
• Purchase timing
• the consumer market
• the buyer’s black box
• consumer buying behavior
• complex buying behavior

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Consumer Behavior

Advertising, Consumerism, Materialism, Marketing

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Consumer behavior—or how people buy and use goods and services—is a rich field of psychological research, particularly for companies trying to sell products to as many potential customers as possible. Since what people buy—and why they buy it—impacts many different facets of their lives, research into consumer behavior ties together several key psychological issues. These include communication (How do different people respond to advertising and marketing?), identity (Do our purchases reveal our personality ?), social status, decision-making , and mental and physical health.

• Why Consumer Behavior Matters
• The Psychology of Buying and Spending
• How Advertising and Marketing Work
• How to Appeal to Consumers

Corporations, political campaigns, and nonprofit organizations all consult findings about consumer behavior to determine how best to market products, candidates, or issues. In some cases, they accomplish this by manipulating people's fears, their least-healthy habits, or their worst tendencies. And consumers themselves can be their own worst enemy, making rash purchasing decisions based on anxiety , faulty logic, or a fleeting desire for social status. But consumers aren’t powerless: Learning more about the different strategies companies employ, as well as the explanations for people's often confusing purchasing decisions, can help individuals more consciously decide what, why, and whether to buy.

In developed countries, people spend only a portion of their money on things they need to survive, and the rest on non-essentials. Purchasing decisions based on want, rather than need, aren’t always rational ; instead, they are influenced by personality , emotion , and trends. To keep up, marketers continuously investigate how individuals and groups make buying choices and respond to marketing techniques.

Political marketing is, in many ways, similar to product marketing: it plays on emotions and people’s desire for compelling stories , rather than pure rationality, and aims to condense complex issues into short, memorable soundbites. Smart politicians use marketing research to tailor their messages, connect with voters who share their values, and counter their opponents’ narrative.

Humans are social animals. We rely on a group to survive and are evolutionarily driven to follow the crowd . To learn what is “correct,” we look to other people—a heuristic known as the principle of social proof . Fads are born because a product’s popularity is assumed to signal value, which further bolsters its popularity.

Natural or man-made disasters can trigger panic buying or hoarding behaviors, either before the disaster or after it has passed, usually of products deemed necessary for survival. In the weeks and months after a disaster, some evidence suggests that “hedonic purchases”—such as alcohol or unhealthy foods —rise as victims of the disaster attempt to cope.

After large-scale recessions, such as the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, consumers typically become more frugal and sensitive to price. These changes become permanent for some consumers, especially for those who were particularly hard-hit; for others, behaviors revert back to baseline once the economy has stabilized and any personal financial challenges have been overcome.

It already has. Consumers are buying less , shifting more purchasing online, and spending less on travel and in-person events. Whether those changes will endure, though, is unclear. Some experts predict that most people will revert back to old habits post-COVID; a small few, it’s predicted, will become more frugal and less materialistic in the long term.

Much of what people purchase—like food, shelter, or medical care—is necessary for their health and security. But what compels someone to buy things that aren’t necessary, like the latest iPhone or an impractical pair of high-heeled shoes? The study of why people make such purchases—which are often irrational—is closely related to the field of behavioral economics , which examines why people deviate from the most rational choice available.

Behavioral economists, marketing professionals, and psychologists have concluded that extraneous purchases may be driven by a need to display one’s social status, or in response to an emotion like sadness or boredom . In other instances, retailers may successfully manipulate the desire for a “good deal” by making an unneeded item seem especially affordable or portraying it as being in limited supply.

Learning how to recognize common manipulation tactics may help individuals and families save money—and stress —in the long term.

Many human behaviors are driven by reward. Purchasing a new gadget or item of clothing triggers a surge of dopamine , which creates pleasurable feelings. Though the glow of a new purchase may not last long, the desire to once again be rewarded with a burst of dopamine drives us to buy more .

It depends. Some research suggests that experiential purchases like vacations bring more happiness than material goods, in both the short- and long-term . However, this rule may not apply universally. For lower-income people, spending on material goods that meet basic needs is often more conducive to happiness, especially if the items remain useful over time.

Consumers are often irrational. Instead of only buying things they need, they also buy unnecessary items—often because the purchase makes them feel good, soothes negative emotions, or boosts social status. A consumer may also buy something that has been framed by a marketer as especially attractive; “buy one get one free” offers, for instance, are hard to resist and encourage people to buy things they don’t need.

Certain buying impulses can ultimately be harmful , but they often serve a psychological purpose. Purchasing unhealthy foods or excessive alcohol, for instance, can temporarily offer comfort from painful emotions; buying a new pair of designer jeans might break the bank, but can also help the purchaser prominently display their social status.

Dissonant buying impulses—or purchases that conflict with one’s resources, needs, and goals —can be difficult to manage, especially when they’re driven by negative emotions. Learning emotional regulation skills —such as naming any negative feelings, redirecting attention to productive activities, or practicing mindfulness —or creating physical “barriers” (such as freezing credit cards so they can’t be used impulsively) can help.

Anxiety is known to spur impulsive purchases —in part because buying things offers a sense of control and can be used to self-soothe. Anxiety can also lead someone to prioritize products that promote safety or a sense of security—such as toilet paper, hand sanitizer, or canned goods.

In a word, panic. Anxiety and fear make the world appear frightening and senseless; stocking up on certain items like toilet paper is one way to restore a feeling of control. Panic buying is also driven in part by herd mentality; if people see that others are hoarding hand sanitizer, they assume they should too.

Impulse buying may be motivated by negative emotions, as purchasing something often temporarily boosts mood. It may also be driven by personality—the naturally more impulsive or less conscientious may be driven to more frequently purchase items on a whim. Marketing strategies, like advertising products as “limited time offers,” can increase the tendency to impulse buy.

Two vast, interrelated industries—advertising and marketing—are dedicated to introducing people to products and convincing them to make purchases.

Since the public’s desires tend to change over time, however, what works in one product’s campaign won’t necessarily work in another’s. To adapt messages for a fickle audience, advertisers employ focus groups, market research, and psychological studies to better understand what compels people to commit to purchases or become loyal to brands.

Everyone has heard the advertising maxim “sex sells,” for instance—but exactly what, when, and why sex can be used to successfully market a product is the subject of much debate among ad makers and behavioral researchers. Recently, some evidence has suggested that pitches to the perceived “lowest common denominator” may actually inspire consumer backlash.

Marketers regularly use psychology to convince consumers to buy. Some common strategies include classical conditioning —training consumers to associate a product with certain cues through repeated exposure—creating a scarcity mindset (suggesting that a product only exists in limited quantities), or employing the principle of social proof to imply that everyone is buying a product—so you should, too.

Marketers often exploit cognitive shortcuts , known as heuristics, to convince consumers to make purchases. One example of this is the anchoring bias , or the brain’s tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information it learns. A savvy marketer may say, for instance, that a car costs $20,000, then quickly offer to take $1,000 off. Since the consumer “anchored” on to the initial $20,000 price tag, a $1,000 discount seems substantial and the consumer may leap at the offer. But if the car was truly worth $15,000, it would still be overpriced, even with the supposed discount factored in. 

Renowned marketing researcher Robert Cialdini found that advertisements are perceived very differently depending on consumers’ state of mind. Fearful consumers, for instance, are more likely to respond negatively to ads that promote standing out from the crowd. However, consumers in a positive state of mind respond well to ads encouraging uniqueness; thus, timing and context are often critical to an ad’s success.

Limited time offers trigger a sense of urgency and force consumers to make quick decisions. A product only being available “for a limited time” (either at all or at a lower price) creates a sense of scarcity. Scarcity—whether real or manufactured—increases a product’s perceived value, heightening the chance of an impulsive purchase.

Because the majority of humans desire and seek out sex, sexual stimuli naturally capture attention; thus, marketers often make use of attractive models or erotic imagery simply to make consumers take notice. Being “primed” with erotic content can change behavior, too; research has found that sexual priming can lead consumers to make riskier financial choices.

The effectiveness of sex in advertising likely depends on several factors, including gender and context. Women appear to respond more negatively to sexual ads than men, research finds. When the product is unrelated to sex, using erotic imagery in ads can trigger dissonance and trigger negative feelings about the brand.

In a crowded marketplace, anyone hoping to sell a product or service will need to stand out. To succeed at this, marketers often turn to psychological research to identify and target their most likely consumers, grab their attention, and convince them that a product will fill a specific need or otherwise better their life. Aiming to inform and persuade consumers—rather than manipulate them—is widely considered to be the most ethical approach, and is likely to help build brand loyalty more than cheap marketing tricks.

Both the message and the messenger matter for  persuasion . Marketing researcher Robert Cialdini has found that first impressions matter greatly—a company (or individual) that appears trustworthy and warm is more likely to gain their audience’s trust. Cialdini also coined the term  “pre-suasion”  to argue that marketers must grab consumers’ attention  before  making an appeal—by offering free samples, for instance, or couching a product pitch in an amusing commercial. 

Turning to psychology can help. Appealing to consumers’ emotions and desire for connection with others are often powerful marketing strategies, as long as they’re not interpreted by consumers as manipulative. Introducing novelty, too, can be effective—research shows that consumers respond to surprising ads, humorous ads, or even “experiential” ads (such as parties or events designed to promote a product). Repeating an ad enough times so that a consumer remembers it—but not so much that they become frustrated—is also a critical part of any effective ad campaign.

Humans are creatures of habit and slow to adapt to change. To spread a new message or idea,  advertisers  have learned that simplicity is key; overcomplicated appeals can be frustrating or confusing for consumers. Summarizing the benefits of a new product, service, or political campaign in pithy, memorable phrases or images—and then repeating the message as often as possible—is more likely to grab consumers' attention and convince them to take a chance on a new object or idea.

Customers trust businesses that are honest with them, sharing accurate information about everything from the benefits of using their products to how they run their business.  Other guidelines for ethical marketing  include clearly distinguishing ads from other types of content (news, entertainment, etc.), prioritizing the interests of children or other vulnerable groups (by not marketing unhealthy products to children, for example), avoiding negative stereotypes, and respecting consumers’  intelligence  and privacy.

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Consumer Psychology and Behavior

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

What Is Consumer Psychology?

• Science of Consumer Behavior
• Role of Consumer Psychologist
• Education and Training

Career Options

Are you interested in why and how people buy some products and not others? Have you ever wondered how media messages influence a shopper's buying choices? If so, then you might be interested in the growing field known as consumer psychology.

Consumer psychology is a specialty area that studies how our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and perceptions influence how we buy and relate to goods and services. In the United States, widely considered a highly consumerist society, this area of study is particularly relevant.

One formal definition of the field describes it as "the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society."

Consumer psychologists investigate how the decision-making process, social persuasion , and motivation influence why shoppers buy some things but not others.

In this overview of the profession, learn more about what consumer psychologists do and where they work.

The Science of Consumer Behavior

According to the Society for Consumer Psychology, Division 23 of the American Psychological Association , consumer psychology "employs theoretical psychological approaches to understanding consumers."  

This field is often considered a subspecialty of industrial-organizational psychology and is also known as the psychology of consumer behavior or the psychology of marketing. Consumer psychologists study a variety of topics including:

• How consumers choose businesses, products, and services
• The thought processes and emotions behind consumer decisions
• How environmental variables such as friends, family, media, and culture influence buying decisions
• What motivates people to choose one product over another
• How personal factors and individual differences affect people's buying choices
• What marketers can do to effectively reach out to their target customers

What Consumer Psychologists Do

So what exactly does a typical consumer psychologist do? These professionals play a critical role not only in helping businesses understand what their customers want and need but also in helping sellers promote and market their products and services to buyers.

Conduct Market Research

Because businesses need to understand their consumers in order to develop products and marketing campaigns that appeal to their target audience, consumer psychologists often spend a great deal of time learning more about what makes shoppers tick. This often involves first figuring out the target audience for a particular product, including the gender, age, and socioeconomic status of the typical shopper.

Next, the consumer psychologist might begin researching the types of products and marketing messages that appeal to these types of buyers.

Develop Marketing Messages

Other consumer psychologists might focus on social marketing, or how ideas and messages spread among groups. Researchers might be interested in getting out information about a product or an important public health message.

Learning how beliefs and attitudes spread among groups can help organizations learn how to better get their message out and encourage word-of-mouth marketing.

Research Consumer Attitudes and Behaviors

Consumer psychologists often conduct research to learn more about buyer behavior. Common research methods used by these professionals include experiments, phone surveys, focus groups, direct observations, and questionnaires.

Chances are good that you have participated in at least one market research survey in your life. These are often conducted by phone, but they may also be done online or through direct mail. In a survey , consumers are often asked to describe their past shopping behavior, factors that influenced their decision-making , and their future buying plans.

Researchers also typically gather details about each respondent's sex, age, race, educational history, and current financial situation. This type of information can be very useful since it allows researchers to look for patterns and learn more about who buys certain products.  

For example, using a survey might allow researchers to discover that women between the ages of 30 and 45 who have a household income between $50,000 to $100,000 are most likely to buy a particular product or service. By knowing this, they can then begin designing marketing campaigns aimed at this target audience.

Education and Training Requirements

So what kind of training do you need if you want to be a consumer psychologist? Most entry-level jobs in consumer psychology require at least a bachelor's degree in psychology .

Entry-level jobs with a bachelor's degree typically involve planning, conducting, and interpreting the results of market research campaigns.

Those interested in more advanced positions or in teaching at the university level will need a master's or doctorate degree in an area related to consumer psychology. Such degree options include general psychology, industrial-organizational psychology , marketing, and consumer studies.  

If you are interested in becoming a consumer psychologist:

• Focus on taking courses that will build your understanding of human behavior, marketing, social psychology , personality, and culture
• Take courses in advertising and marketing
• Take courses in experimental methods , particularly experimental design and statistics

The career path you ultimately choose will depend a great deal upon your interests and educational background. For example, if you have an interest in conducting theoretical research and teaching, consider earning a doctorate degree so that you can teach courses and perform original research at a university. If you prefer to work in an area like market research, advertising, or sales, a bachelor's degree might be sufficient.

Other job options include acting as a consultant for private businesses or working for government agencies.

In such jobs, consumer psychologists might be asked to perform a wide range of duties, including development marketing campaigns, researching buyer trends, designing social media advertising, or analyzing statistics.

Understanding what makes people buy the things they do is much more than a guessing game. Businesses now employ consumer psychologists to scientifically evaluate their customer's decisions and choices. The next time you look at an advertisement or take a consumer survey, consider the role that consumer psychologists may have played in developing those messages and questionnaires.

Solomon M. Consumer Psychology .  Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology . 2004:483-492. doi:10.1016/b0-12-657410-3/00219-1

Society for Consumer Psychology. SCP's culture and values .

Ali AM, Said AM, Salleh MZM. Demographic profile and purchasing pattern of organic cosmetic products . In: Abdullah M, Yahya W, Ramli N, Mohamed S, Ahmad B, eds. Regional Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences. Singapore: Springer; 2016. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-1458-1_81

American Psychological Association. Careers in psychology .

Haugtvedt CP, Herr PM, Kardes FR, eds. Handbook of Consumer Psychology. New York: Taylor & Francis Group; 2018.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

The past, present, and future of consumer research

• Published: 13 June 2020
• Volume 31 , pages 137–149, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

• Maayan S. Malter   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0383-7925 1 ,
• Morris B. Holbrook 1 ,
• Barbara E. Kahn 2 ,
• Jeffrey R. Parker 3 &
• Donald R. Lehmann 1  

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In this article, we document the evolution of research trends (concepts, methods, and aims) within the field of consumer behavior, from the time of its early development to the present day, as a multidisciplinary area of research within marketing. We describe current changes in retailing and real-world consumption and offer suggestions on how to use observations of consumption phenomena to generate new and interesting consumer behavior research questions. Consumption continues to change with technological advancements and shifts in consumers’ values and goals. We cannot know the exact shape of things to come, but we polled a sample of leading scholars and summarize their predictions on where the field may be headed in the next twenty years.

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1 Introduction

Beginning in the late 1950s, business schools shifted from descriptive and practitioner-focused studies to more theoretically driven and academically rigorous research (Dahl et al. 1959 ). As the field expanded from an applied form of economics to embrace theories and methodologies from psychology, sociology, anthropology, and statistics, there was an increased emphasis on understanding the thoughts, desires, and experiences of individual consumers. For academic marketing, this meant that research not only focused on the decisions and strategies of marketing managers but also on the decisions and thought processes on the other side of the market—customers.

Since then, the academic study of consumer behavior has evolved and incorporated concepts and methods, not only from marketing at large but also from related social science disciplines, and from the ever-changing landscape of real-world consumption behavior. Its position as an area of study within a larger discipline that comprises researchers from diverse theoretical backgrounds and methodological training has stirred debates over its identity. One article describes consumer behavior as a multidisciplinary subdiscipline of marketing “characterized by the study of people operating in a consumer role involving acquisition, consumption, and disposition of marketplace products, services, and experiences” (MacInnis and Folkes 2009 , p. 900).

This article reviews the evolution of the field of consumer behavior over the past half century, describes its current status, and predicts how it may evolve over the next twenty years. Our review is by no means a comprehensive history of the field (see Schumann et al. 2008 ; Rapp and Hill 2015 ; Wang et al. 2015 ; Wilkie and Moore 2003 , to name a few) but rather focuses on a few key thematic developments. Though we observe many major shifts during this period, certain questions and debates have persisted: Does consumer behavior research need to be relevant to marketing managers or is there intrinsic value from studying the consumer as a project pursued for its own sake? What counts as consumption: only consumption from traditional marketplace transactions or also consumption in a broader sense of non-marketplace interactions? Which are the most appropriate theoretical traditions and methodological tools for addressing questions in consumer behavior research?

2 A brief history of consumer research over the past sixty years—1960 to 2020

In 1969, the Association for Consumer Research was founded and a yearly conference to share marketing research specifically from the consumer’s perspective was instituted. This event marked the culmination of the growing interest in the topic by formalizing it as an area of research within marketing (consumer psychology had become a formalized branch of psychology within the APA in 1960). So, what was consumer behavior before 1969? Scanning current consumer-behavior doctoral seminar syllabi reveals few works predating 1969, with most of those coming from psychology and economics, namely Herbert Simon’s A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice (1955), Abraham Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation (1943), and Ernest Dichter’s Handbook of Consumer Motivations (1964). In short, research that illuminated and informed our understanding of consumer behavior prior to 1969 rarely focused on marketing-specific topics, much less consumers or consumption (Dichter’s handbook being a notable exception). Yet, these works were crucial to the rise of consumer behavior research because, in the decades after 1969, there was a shift within academic marketing to thinking about research from a behavioral or decision science perspective (Wilkie and Moore 2003 ). The following section details some ways in which this shift occurred. We draw on a framework proposed by the philosopher Larry Laudan ( 1986 ), who distinguished among three inter-related aspects of scientific inquiry—namely, concepts (the relevant ideas, theories, hypotheses, and constructs); methods (the techniques employed to test and validate these concepts); and aims (the purposes or goals that motivate the investigation).

2.1 Key concepts in the late - 1960s

During the late-1960s, we tended to view the buyer as a computer-like machine for processing information according to various formal rules that embody economic rationality to form a preference for one or another option in order to arrive at a purchase decision. This view tended to manifest itself in a couple of conspicuous ways. The first was a model of buyer behavior introduced by John Howard in 1963 in the second edition of his marketing textbook and quickly adopted by virtually every theorist working in our field—including, Howard and Sheth (of course), Engel-Kollat-&-Blackwell, Franco Nicosia, Alan Andreasen, Jim Bettman, and Joel Cohen. Howard’s great innovation—which he based on a scheme that he had found in the work of Plato (namely, the linkages among Cognition, Affect, and Conation)—took the form of a boxes-and-arrows formulation heavily influenced by the approach to organizational behavior theory that Howard (University of Pittsburgh) had picked up from Herbert Simon (Carnegie Melon University). The model represented a chain of events

where I = inputs of information (from advertising, word-of-mouth, brand features, etc.); C = cognitions (beliefs or perceptions about a brand); A = Affect (liking or preference for the brand); B = behavior (purchase of the brand); and S = satisfaction (post-purchase evaluation of the brand that feeds back onto earlier stages of the sequence, according to a learning model in which reinforced behavior tends to be repeated). This formulation lay at the heart of Howard’s work, which he updated, elaborated on, and streamlined over the remainder of his career. Importantly, it informed virtually every buyer-behavior model that blossomed forth during the last half of the twentieth century.

To represent the link between cognitions and affect, buyer-behavior researchers used various forms of the multi-attribute attitude model (MAAM), originally proposed by psychologists such as Fishbein and Rosenberg as part of what Fishbein and Ajzen ( 1975 ) called the theory of reasoned action. Under MAAM, cognitions (beliefs about brand attributes) are weighted by their importance and summed to create an explanation or prediction of affect (liking for a brand or preference for one brand versus another), which in turn determines behavior (choice of a brand or intention to purchase a brand). This took the work of economist Kelvin Lancaster (with whom Howard interacted), which assumed attitude was based on objective attributes, and extended it to include subjective ones (Lancaster 1966 ; Ratchford 1975 ). Overall, the set of concepts that prevailed in the late-1960s assumed the buyer exhibited economic rationality and acted as a computer-like information-processing machine when making purchase decisions.

2.2 Favored methods in the late-1960s

The methods favored during the late-1960s tended to be almost exclusively neo-positivistic in nature. That is, buyer-behavior research adopted the kinds of methodological rigor that we associate with the physical sciences and the hypothetico-deductive approaches advocated by the neo-positivistic philosophers of science.

Thus, the accepted approaches tended to be either experimental or survey based. For example, numerous laboratory studies tested variations of the MAAM and focused on questions about how to measure beliefs, how to weight the beliefs, how to combine the weighted beliefs, and so forth (e.g., Beckwith and Lehmann 1973 ). Here again, these assumed a rational economic decision-maker who processed information something like a computer.

Seeking rigor, buyer-behavior studies tended to be quantitative in their analyses, employing multivariate statistics, structural equation models, multidimensional scaling, conjoint analysis, and other mathematically sophisticated techniques. For example, various attempts to test the ICABS formulation developed simultaneous (now called structural) equation models such as those deployed by Farley and Ring ( 1970 , 1974 ) to test the Howard and Sheth ( 1969 ) model and by Beckwith and Lehmann ( 1973 ) to measure halo effects.

2.3 Aims in the late-1960s

During this time period, buyer-behavior research was still considered a subdivision of marketing research, the purpose of which was to provide insights useful to marketing managers in making strategic decisions. Essentially, every paper concluded with a section on “Implications for Marketing Managers.” Authors who failed to conform to this expectation could generally count on having their work rejected by leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research ( JMR ) and the Journal of Marketing ( JM ).

2.4 Summary—the three R’s in the late-1960s

Starting in the late-1960s to the early-1980s, virtually every buyer-behavior researcher followed the traditional approach to concepts, methods, and aims, now encapsulated under what we might call the three R’s —namely, rationality , rigor , and relevance . However, as we transitioned into the 1980s and beyond, that changed as some (though by no means all) consumer researchers began to expand their approaches and to evolve different perspectives.

2.5 Concepts after 1980

In some circles, the traditional emphasis on the buyer’s rationality—that is, a view of the buyer as a rational-economic, decision-oriented, information-processing, computer-like machine for making choices—began to evolve in at least two primary ways.

First, behavioral economics (originally studied in marketing under the label Behavioral Decision Theory)—developed in psychology by Kahneman and Tversky, in economics by Thaler, and applied in marketing by a number of forward-thinking theorists (e.g., Eric Johnson, Jim Bettman, John Payne, Itamar Simonson, Jay Russo, Joel Huber, and more recently, Dan Ariely)—challenged the rationality of consumers as decision-makers. It was shown that numerous commonly used decision heuristics depart from rational choice and are exceptions to the traditional assumptions of economic rationality. This trend shed light on understanding consumer financial decision-making (Prelec and Loewenstein 1998 ; Gourville 1998 ; Lynch Jr 2011 ) and how to develop “nudges” to help consumers make better decisions for their personal finances (summarized in Johnson et al. 2012 ).

Second, the emerging experiential view (anticipated by Alderson, Levy, and others; developed by Holbrook and Hirschman, and embellished by Schmitt, Pine, and Gilmore, and countless followers) regarded consumers as flesh-and-blood human beings (rather than as information-processing computer-like machines), focused on hedonic aspects of consumption, and expanded the concepts embodied by ICABS (Table 1 ).

2.6 Methods after 1980

The two burgeoning areas of research—behavioral economics and experiential theories—differed in their methodological approaches. The former relied on controlled randomized experiments with a focus on decision strategies and behavioral outcomes. For example, experiments tested the process by which consumers evaluate options using information display boards and “Mouselab” matrices of aspects and attributes (Payne et al. 1988 ). This school of thought also focused on behavioral dependent measures, such as choice (Huber et al. 1982 ; Simonson 1989 ; Iyengar and Lepper 2000 ).

The latter was influenced by post-positivistic philosophers of science—such as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Richard Rorty—and approaches expanded to include various qualitative techniques (interpretive, ethnographic, humanistic, and even introspective methods) not previously prominent in the field of consumer research. These included:

Interpretive approaches —such as those drawing on semiotics and hermeneutics—in an effort to gain a richer understanding of the symbolic meanings involved in consumption experiences;

Ethnographic approaches — borrowed from cultural anthropology—such as those illustrated by the influential Consumer Behavior Odyssey (Belk et al. 1989 ) and its discoveries about phenomena related to sacred aspects of consumption or the deep meanings of collections and other possessions;

Humanistic approaches —such as those borrowed from cultural studies or from literary criticism and more recently gathered together under the general heading of consumer culture theory ( CCT );

Introspective or autoethnographic approaches —such as those associated with a method called subjective personal introspection ( SPI ) that various consumer researchers like Sidney Levy and Steve Gould have pursued to gain insights based on their own private lives.

These qualitative approaches tended not to appear in the more traditional journals such as the Journal of Marketing , Journal of Marketing Research , or Marketing Science . However, newer journals such as Consumption, Markets, & Culture and Marketing Theory began to publish papers that drew on the various interpretive, ethnographic, humanistic, or introspective methods.

2.7 Aims after 1980

In 1974, consumer research finally got its own journal with the launch of the Journal of Consumer Research ( JCR ). The early editors of JCR —especially Bob Ferber, Hal Kassarjian, and Jim Bettman—held a rather divergent attitude about the importance or even the desirability of managerial relevance as a key goal of consumer studies. Under their influence, some researchers began to believe that consumer behavior is a phenomenon worthy of study in its own right—purely for the purpose of understanding it better. The journal incorporated articles from an array of methodologies: quantitative (both secondary data analysis and experimental techniques) and qualitative. The “right” balance between theoretical insight and substantive relevance—which are not in inherent conflict—is a matter of debate to this day and will likely continue to be debated well into the future.

2.8 Summary—the three I’s after 1980

In sum, beginning in the early-1980s, consumer research branched out. Much of the work in consumer studies remained within the earlier tradition of the three R’s—that is, rationality (an information-processing decision-oriented buyer), rigor (neo-positivistic experimental designs and quantitative techniques), and relevance (usefulness to marketing managers). Nonetheless, many studies embraced enlarged views of the three major aspects that might be called the three I’s —that is, irrationality (broadened perspectives that incorporate illogical, heuristic, experiential, or hedonic aspects of consumption), interpretation (various qualitative or “postmodern” approaches), and intrinsic motivation (the joy of pursuing a managerially irrelevant consumer study purely for the sake of satisfying one’s own curiosity, without concern for whether it does or does not help a marketing practitioner make a bigger profit).

3 The present—the consumer behavior field today

3.1 present concepts.

In recent years, technological changes have significantly influenced the nature of consumption as the customer journey has transitioned to include more interaction on digital platforms that complements interaction in physical stores. This shift poses a major conceptual challenge in understanding if and how these technological changes affect consumption. Does the medium through which consumption occurs fundamentally alter the psychological and social processes identified in earlier research? In addition, this shift allows us to collect more data at different stages of the customer journey, which further allows us to analyze behavior in ways that were not previously available.

Revisiting the ICABS framework, many of the previous concepts are still present, but we are now addressing them through a lens of technological change (Table 2 )

. In recent years, a number of concepts (e.g., identity, beliefs/lay theories, affect as information, self-control, time, psychological ownership, search for meaning and happiness, social belonging, creativity, and status) have emerged as integral factors that influence and are influenced by consumption. To better understand these concepts, a number of influential theories from social psychology have been adopted into consumer behavior research. Self-construal (Markus and Kitayama 1991 ), regulatory focus (Higgins 1998 ), construal level (Trope and Liberman 2010 ), and goal systems (Kruglanski et al. 2002 ) all provide social-cognition frameworks through which consumer behavior researchers study the psychological processes behind consumer behavior. This “adoption” of social psychological theories into consumer behavior is a symbiotic relationship that further enhances the theories. Tory Higgins happily stated that he learned more about his own theories from the work of marketing academics (he cited Angela Lee and Michel Pham) in further testing and extending them.

3.2 Present Methods

Not only have technological advancements changed the nature of consumption but they have also significantly influenced the methods used in consumer research by adding both new sources of data and improved analytical tools (Ding et al. 2020 ). Researchers continue to use traditional methods from psychology in empirical research (scale development, laboratory experiments, quantitative analyses, etc.) and interpretive approaches in qualitative research. Additionally, online experiments using participants from panels such as Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific have become commonplace in the last decade. While they raise concerns about the quality of the data and about the external validity of the results, these online experiments have greatly increased the speed and decreased the cost of collecting data, so researchers continue to use them, albeit with some caution. Reminiscent of the discussion in the 1970s and 1980s about the use of student subjects, the projectability of the online responses and of an increasingly conditioned “professional” group of online respondents (MTurkers) is a major concern.

Technology has also changed research methodology. Currently, there is a large increase in the use of secondary data thanks to the availability of Big Data about online and offline behavior. Methods in computer science have advanced our ability to analyze large corpuses of unstructured data (text, voice, visual images) in an efficient and rigorous way and, thus, to tap into a wealth of nuanced thoughts, feelings, and behaviors heretofore only accessible to qualitative researchers through laboriously conducted content analyses. There are also new neuro-marketing techniques like eye-tracking, fMRI’s, body arousal measures (e.g., heart rate, sweat), and emotion detectors that allow us to measure automatic responses. Lastly, there has been an increase in large-scale field experiments that can be run in online B2C marketplaces.

3.3 Present Aims

Along with a focus on real-world observations and data, there is a renewed emphasis on managerial relevance. Countless conference addresses and editorials in JCR , JCP , and other journals have emphasized the importance of making consumer research useful outside of academia—that is, to help companies, policy makers, and consumers. For instance, understanding how the “new” consumer interacts over time with other consumers and companies in the current marketplace is a key area for future research. As global and social concerns become more salient in all aspects of life, issues of long-term sustainability, social equality, and ethical business practices have also become more central research topics. Fortunately, despite this emphasis on relevance, theoretical contributions and novel ideas are still highly valued. An appropriate balance of theory and practice has become the holy grail of consumer research.

The effects of the current trends in real-world consumption will increase in magnitude with time as more consumers are digitally native. Therefore, a better understanding of current consumer behavior can give us insights and help predict how it will continue to evolve in the years to come.

4 The future—the consumer behavior field in 2040

The other papers use 2030 as a target year but we asked our survey respondents to make predictions for 2040 and thus we have a different future target year.

Niels Bohr once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Indeed, it would be a fool’s errand for a single person to hazard a guess about the state of the consumer behavior field twenty years from now. Therefore, predictions from 34 active consumer researchers were collected to address this task. Here, we briefly summarize those predictions.

4.1 Future Concepts

While few respondents proffered guesses regarding specific concepts that would be of interest twenty years from now, many suggested broad topics and trends they expected to see in the field. Expectations for topics could largely be grouped into three main areas. Many suspected that we will be examining essentially the same core topics, perhaps at a finer-grained level, from different perspectives or in ways that we currently cannot utilize due to methodological limitations (more on methods below). A second contingent predicted that much research would center on the impending crises the world faces today, most mentioning environmental and social issues (the COVID-19 pandemic had not yet begun when these predictions were collected and, unsurprisingly, was not anticipated by any of our respondents). The last group, citing the widely expected profound impact of AI on consumers’ lives, argued that AI and other technology-related topics will be dominant subjects in consumer research circa 2040.

While the topic of technology is likely to be focal in the field, our current expectations for the impact of technology on consumers’ lives are narrower than it should be. Rather than merely offering innumerable conveniences and experiences, it seems likely that technology will begin to be integrated into consumers’ thoughts, identities, and personal relationships—probably sooner than we collectively expect. The integration of machines into humans’ bodies and lives will present the field with an expanding list of research questions that do not exist today. For example, how will the concepts of the self, identity, privacy, and goal pursuit change when web-connected technology seamlessly integrates with human consciousness and cognition? Major questions will also need to be answered regarding philosophy of mind, ethics, and social inequality. We suspect that the impact of technology on consumers and consumer research will be far broader than most consumer-behavior researchers anticipate.

As for broader trends within consumer research, there were two camps: (1) those who expect (or hope) that dominant theories (both current and yet to be developed) will become more integrated and comprehensive and (2) those who expect theoretical contributions to become smaller and smaller, to the point of becoming trivial. Both groups felt that current researchers are filling smaller cracks than before, but disagreed on how this would ultimately be resolved.

4.2 Future Methods

As was the case with concepts, respondents’ expectations regarding consumer-research methodologies in 2030 can also be divided into three broad baskets. Unsurprisingly, many indicated that we would be using many technologies not currently available or in wide use. Perhaps more surprising was that most cited the use of technology such as AI, machine-learning algorithms, and robots in designing—as opposed to executing or analyzing—experiments. (Some did point to the use of technologies such as virtual reality in the actual execution of experiments.) The second camp indicated that a focus on reliable and replicable results (discussed further below) will encourage a greater tendency for pre-registering studies, more use of “Big Data,” and a demand for more studies per paper (versus more papers per topic, which some believe is a more fruitful direction). Finally, the third lot indicated that “real data” would be in high demand, thereby necessitating the use of incentive-compatible, consequential dependent variables and a greater prevalence of field studies in consumer research.

As a result, young scholars would benefit from developing a “toolkit” of methodologies for collecting and analyzing the abundant new data of interest to the field. This includes (but is not limited to) a deep understanding of designing and implementing field studies (Gerber and Green 2012 ), data analysis software (R, Python, etc.), text mining and analysis (Humphreys and Wang 2018 ), and analytical tools for other unstructured forms of data such as image and sound. The replication crisis in experimental research means that future scholars will also need to take a more critical approach to validity (internal, external, construct), statistical power, and significance in their work.

4.3 Future Aims

While there was an air of existential concern about the future of the field, most agreed that the trend will be toward increasing the relevance and reliability of consumer research. Specifically, echoing calls from journals and thought leaders, the respondents felt that papers will need to offer more actionable implications for consumers, managers, or policy makers. However, few thought that this increased focus would come at the expense of theoretical insights, suggesting a more demanding overall standard for consumer research in 2040. Likewise, most felt that methodological transparency, open access to data and materials, and study pre-registration will become the norm as the field seeks to allay concerns about the reliability and meaningfulness of its research findings.

4.4 Summary - Future research questions and directions

Despite some well-justified pessimism, the future of consumer research is as bright as ever. As we revised this paper amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that many aspects of marketplace behavior, consumption, and life in general will change as a result of this unprecedented global crisis. Given this, and the radical technological, social, and environmental changes that loom on the horizon, consumer researchers will have a treasure trove of topics to tackle in the next ten years, many of which will carry profound substantive importance. While research approaches will evolve, the core goals will remain consistent—namely, to generate theoretically insightful, empirically supported, and substantively impactful research (Table 3 ).

5 Conclusion

At any given moment in time, the focal concepts, methods, and aims of consumer-behavior scholarship reflect both the prior development of the field and trends in the larger scientific community. However, despite shifting trends, the core of the field has remained constant—namely, to understand the motivations, thought processes, and experiences of individuals as they consume goods, services, information, and other offerings, and to use these insights to develop interventions to improve both marketing strategy for firms and consumer welfare for individuals and groups. Amidst the excitement of new technologies, social trends, and consumption experiences, it is important to look back and remind ourselves of the insights the field has already generated. Effectively integrating these past findings with new observations and fresh research will help the field advance our understanding of consumer behavior.

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Malter, M.S., Holbrook, M.B., Kahn, B.E. et al. The past, present, and future of consumer research. Mark Lett 31 , 137–149 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-020-09526-8

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OPINION article

Factors affecting impulse buying behavior of consumers.

• Instituto Superior de Gestão, Lisbon, Portugal

In recent years, the study of consumer behavior has been marked by significant changes, mainly in decision-making process and consequently in the influences of purchase intention ( Stankevich, 2017 ).

The markets are different and characterized by an increased competition, as well a constant innovation in products and services available and a greater number of companies in the same market. In this scenario it is essential to know the consumer well ( Varadarajan, 2020 ). It is through the analysis of the factors that have a direct impact on consumer behavior that it is possible to innovate and meet their expectations. This research is essential for marketers to be able to improve their campaigns and reach the target audience more effectively ( Ding et al., 2020 ).

Consumer behavior refers to the activities directly involved in obtaining products /services, so it includes the decision-making processes that precede and succeed these actions. Thus, it appears that the advertising message can cause a certain psychological influence that motivates individuals to desire and, consequently, buy a certain product/service ( Wertenbroch et al., 2020 ).

Studies developed by Meena (2018) show that from a young age one begins to have a preference for one product/service over another, as we are confronted with various commercial stimuli that shape our choices. The sales promotion has become one of the most powerful tools to change the perception of buyers and has a significant impact on their purchase decision ( Khan et al., 2019 ). Advertising has a great capacity to influence and persuade, and even the most innocuous, can cause changes in behavior that affect the consumer's purchase intention. Falebita et al. (2020) consider this influence predominantly positive, as shown by about 84.0% of the total number of articles reviewed in the study developed by these authors.

Kumar et al. (2020) add that psychological factors have a strong implication in the purchase decision, as we easily find people who, after having purchased a product/ service, wonder about the reason why they did it. It is essential to understand the mental triggers behind the purchase decision process, which is why consumer psychology is related to marketing strategies ( Ding et al., 2020 ). It is not uncommon for the two areas to use the same models to explain consumer behavior and the reasons that trigger impulse purchases. Consumers are attracted by advertising and the messages it conveys, which is reflected in their behavior and purchase intentions ( Varadarajan, 2020 ).

Impulse buying has been studied from several perspectives, namely: (i) rational processes; (ii) emotional resources; (iii) the cognitive currents arising from the theory of social judgment; (iv) persuasive communication; (v) and the effects of advertising on consumer behavior ( Malter et al., 2020 ).

The causes of impulsive behavior are triggered by an irresistible force to buy and an inability to evaluate its consequences. Despite being aware of the negative effects of buying, there is an enormous desire to immediately satisfy your most pressing needs ( Meena, 2018 ).

The importance of impulse buying in consumer behavior has been studied since the 1940's, since it represents between 40.0 and 80.0% of all purchases. This type of purchase obeys non-rational reasons that are characterized by the sudden appearance and the (in) satisfaction between the act of buying and the results obtained ( Reisch and Zhao, 2017 ). Aragoncillo and Orús (2018) also refer that a considerable percentage of sales comes from purchases that are not planned and do not correspond to the intended products before entering the store.

According to Burton et al. (2018) , impulse purchases occur when there is a sudden and strong emotional desire, which arises from a reactive behavior that is characterized by low cognitive control. This tendency to buy spontaneously and without reflection can be explained by the immediate gratification it provides to the buyer ( Pradhan et al., 2018 ).

Impulsive shopping in addition to having an emotional content can be triggered by several factors, including: the store environment, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and the emotional state of the consumer at that time ( Gogoi and Shillong, 2020 ). We believe that impulse purchases can be stimulated by an unexpected need, by a visual stimulus, a promotional campaign and/or by the decrease of the cognitive capacity to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of that purchase.

The buying experience increasingly depends on the interaction between the person and the point of sale environment, but it is not just the atmosphere that stimulates the impulsive behavior of the consumer. The sensory and psychological factors associated with the type of products, the knowledge about them and brand loyalty, often end up overlapping the importance attributed to the physical environment ( Platania et al., 2016 ).

The impulse buying causes an emotional lack of control generated by the conflict between the immediate reward and the negative consequences that the purchase can originate, which can trigger compulsive behaviors that can become chronic and pathological ( Pandya and Pandya, 2020 ).

Sohn and Ko (2021) , argue that although all impulse purchases can be considered as unplanned, not all unplanned purchases can be considered impulsive. Unplanned purchases can occur, simply because the consumer needs to purchase a product, but for whatever reason has not been placed on the shopping list in advance. This suggests that unplanned purchases are not necessarily accompanied by the urgent desire that generally characterizes impulse purchases.

The impulse purchases arise from sensory experiences (e.g., store atmosphere, product layout), so purchases made in physical stores tend to be more impulsive than purchases made online. This type of shopping results from the stimulation of the five senses and the internet does not have this capacity, so that online shopping can be less encouraging of impulse purchases than shopping in physical stores ( Moreira et al., 2017 ).

Researches developed by Aragoncillo and Orús (2018) reveal that 40.0% of consumers spend more money than planned, in physical stores compared to 25.0% in online purchases. This situation can be explained by the fact that consumers must wait for the product to be delivered when they buy online and this time interval may make impulse purchases unfeasible.

Following the logic of Platania et al. (2017) we consider that impulse buying takes socially accepted behavior to the extreme, which makes it difficult to distinguish between normal consumption and pathological consumption. As such, we believe that compulsive buying behavior does not depend only on a single variable, but rather on a combination of sociodemographic, emotional, sensory, genetic, psychological, social, and cultural factors. Personality traits also have an important role in impulse buying. Impulsive buyers have low levels of self-esteem, high levels of anxiety, depression and negative mood and a strong tendency to develop obsessive-compulsive disorders. However, it appears that the degree of uncertainty derived from the pandemic that hit the world and the consequent economic crisis, seems to have changed people's behavior toward a more planned and informed consumption ( Sheth, 2020 ).

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: consumer behavior, purchase intention, impulse purchase, emotional influences, marketing strategies

Citation: Rodrigues RI, Lopes P and Varela M (2021) Factors Affecting Impulse Buying Behavior of Consumers. Front. Psychol. 12:697080. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.697080

Received: 19 April 2021; Accepted: 10 May 2021; Published: 02 June 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Rodrigues, Lopes and Varela. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Rosa Isabel Rodrigues, rosa.rodrigues@isg.pt

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Blog Customer Experience

The Psychology of Consumer Buying Behavior: Understanding How and Why People Buy

Kate williams.

1 March 2024

21 min read

Table Of Contents

Consumer Buying Behavior: Definition and Significance

The evolution of consumer buying behavior research, factors affecting consumer behavior.

• The Consumer Decision-Making Process

Types of Buying Decisions

The influence of marketing and advertising on consumer behavior, the impact of technology on consumer behavior, understanding consumer behavior in different cultures, consumer behavior research methods, ethical considerations in consumer behavior, wrapping up.

As a business owner or marketer, it’s essential to understand the psychology behind consumer buying behavior. By understanding how and why people make purchasing decisions, you can tailor your marketing strategies and improve your chances of success.

In this blog post, we’ll:

• Understand the definition and significance of consumer buying behavior
• Chart the evolution of consumer buying behavior research
• Delve into the factors that influence consumer buying behavior
• Explore the consumer decision-making process
• The types of buying decisions
• The influence of marketing and advertising
• The impact of technology
• Understanding consumer behavior in different cultures
• Consumer behavior research methods
• Ethical considerations in consumer behavior

Consumer buying behavior studies how and why individuals purchase goods or services. Understanding consumer behavior is crucial for businesses to create effective marketing strategies that appeal to potential customers and lead to increased sales.

Consumer behavior is influenced by a range of factors, including psychological, cultural, social, and economic. These factors vary greatly depending on the individual, background, and circumstances. Also, you can divide these consumers based on their behavior to further personalize every customer touchpoint, known as behavioral segmentation .

In this guide, we will explore the psychology of consumer buying behavior in depth, including the different models of consumer behavior and how they can be applied to create effective marketing strategies.

The study of consumer buying behavior has a rich history that spans over a century. The first research on the topic was conducted by John Dewey in the early 1900s, who examined how advertising affects consumer behavior. Since then, consumer buying behavior research has expanded significantly, with scholars exploring a range of factors that influence consumer behavior.

In the 1950s, researchers began exploring the psychological factors that affect consumers, including motivation, perception, and attitudes. 

This led to the development of several influential theories, including Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which suggests that consumers are motivated by a range of needs, from basic physiological needs to higher-level needs like self-actualization, to buy products.

In the 1960s and 1970s, researchers began to explore the impact of social factors on consumer behavior, including the role of reference groups and social class.

This period also saw the development of several models of the consumer decision-making process, including the Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) and the Howard-Sheth models.

In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers began to explore the impact of situational factors on consumer behavior, including the role of time and location in shaping purchase decisions. 

This period also saw the development of several models of consumer behavior that integrated the various factors that influence consumer decision-making.

In the 21st century, consumer buying behavior research has continued to evolve, with researchers exploring the impact of technology on consumer behavior, including the rise of e-commerce and social media, and mobile devices on the shopping experience.

Researchers have also continued to explore the impact of cultural factors on consumer behavior, including the role of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory in shaping cross-cultural consumer behavior.

Overall, the evolution of consumer buying behavior research has been characterized by a growing understanding of the complex factors that influence consumer behavior and the development of new research methods and theories to understand better and explain consumer decision-making.

Personal Factors

Personal factors play a crucial role in influencing the different types of buyers. These factors include age, income, gender, lifestyle, personality, etc.

• Age: Different age groups have different needs and preferences. Younger consumers may prioritize the latest technology and fashion trends, while older consumers may value practicality and durability.
• Income: Higher-income consumers may have more purchasing power and be willing to pay more for high-quality products and services. On the other hand, consumers with lower incomes may prioritize affordability and may be more price-sensitive.
• Gender: Men and women may have different preferences regarding products and services. For example, men may be more interested in sports and technology, while women may be more interested in beauty and fashion.
• Lifestyle: A consumer’s lifestyle can affect their complex buying behavior. For example, someone who lives an active lifestyle may be more interested in fitness products and services. In contrast, someone who prioritizes relaxation may be more interested in spa treatments and luxury vacations.
• Personality: Consumer personality traits can also affect their buying habits. For example, extroverted people may be more interested in social activities and events, while introverted may be more interested in solitary activities like reading and watching movies.

These personal factors can influence a consumer’s decision-making and buying behavior. As a result, businesses should consider these factors when developing marketing strategies and creating products and services that appeal to their target audience.

Psychological Factors

Psychological factors are crucial in shaping consumer behavior. These factors are mainly internal and subjective, involving how consumers perceive, interpret, and process information about a consumer purchase. 

Key psychological factors affecting consumer behavior include motivation, perception, learning, beliefs, and attitudes.

• Motivation refers to the internal drive or desire that prompts consumers to take action, such as buying a product. Various factors, including personal needs, desires, and goals, can influence motivation. 
• For example, a consumer motivated by the need for security may be more likely to purchase insurance or invest in a secure financial product.
• Perception refers to how consumers interpret and make sense of information about a product or service. Various factors can influence perception, including the consumer’s past experiences, expectations, and cultural background.
• For example, a consumer who has had a positive experience with a particular brand may have a more favorable perception of that brand than a consumer who has not had any experience with the brand.
• Learning refers to how consumers acquire new knowledge, skills, or attitudes about a product or service. 
• Learning can occur through various channels, including personal experience, observation, and communication. For example, a consumer who has had a positive experience with a particular product may be more likely to purchase it again.
• Beliefs refer to consumers’ cognitive frameworks or assumptions about a product or service. Beliefs can be based on personal experience, cultural values, or social influence. For example, consumers who believe organic products are healthier may be more likely to purchase organic foods.
• Attitudes refer to the consumer’s overall evaluation or perception of a product or service. Attitudes can be positive, negative, or neutral and can be influenced by various factors, including personal experience, social influence, and marketing messages.

For example, a consumer with a positive attitude towards a brand may be likelier to recommend it to others or purchase from it again.

Understanding these psychological factors and their impact on consumer behavior can help businesses develop effective marketing strategies that resonate with their target audience. By appealing to consumers’ motivations, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes, businesses can build stronger connections with their customers and drive more sales.

Social Factors

Social factors significantly shape consumer behavior. Here are some key social factors that influence buying decisions:

Culture refers to shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that define a group or society. Culture shapes consumer behavior by influencing what people buy, how they buy it, and why they buy it. For example, in some cultures, it is customary to haggle over prices, while in others, fixed prices are the norm.

Family members can significantly influence each other’s buying decisions. Children often influence what their parents buy, and spouses often make joint purchase decisions. Family roles and dynamics, such as who has the final say in purchasing decisions, also play a role.

Reference groups: A reference group is a group of people that an individual looks to for guidance on social norms, values, and behaviors. Reference groups can include family members, friends, coworkers, or celebrities. The opinions and actions of these groups can influence a person’s buying decisions.

Social class:

Social class refers to people with similar income levels, education, occupation, and lifestyle. Social class can influence consumer behavior by shaping what products people buy, where they shop, and how they make purchase decisions.

Understanding these social factors can help businesses develop marketing strategies that resonate with their target audience. For example, a business that caters to a high-income social class may want to market its products as exclusive or high-end, while a business targeting a younger demographic may want to focus on social media and influencer marketing.

Situational Factors

Situational factors refer to external conditions that affect consumer behavior, including the purchase timing, location, and the buying occasion. These factors can influence a consumer’s purchase decision and include the following :

Time is a situational factor that can impact consumer behavior. Time-related situational factors include the time of day, day of the week, and time of year. For example, consumers may be more likely to purchase ice cream during the summer months or holiday-themed items during the corresponding holiday season.

The purchase location can also influence consumer behavior. For instance, consumers may be more likely to purchase luxury items in upscale department stores or shopping centers.

Buying Occasion: 

Buying occasions can also impact consumer behavior. A buying occasion could be a special event or holiday, such as Valentine’s Day or a wedding, that may trigger a purchase.

Situational factors can significantly impact consumer behavior and create opportunities for businesses to tailor their marketing strategies to specific situations or occasions. For example, a retailer may offer holiday-themed promotions or discounts during the Christmas season to capitalize on the increase in consumer spending.

The Five Stages of the Consumer Decision-Making Process: An Overview

The consumer decision-making process is a five-stage process consumers go through before purchasing. The first stage is problem recognition, where consumers identify their needs or want. The second stage is information search, where consumers gather information to make informed decisions. The third stage is the evaluation of alternatives, where consumers weigh the pros and cons of different options. The fourth stage is the purchase decision, where consumers decide to buy. The fifth and final stage is post-purchase evaluation, where consumers assess their satisfaction with the purchase. Understanding these stages is essential for businesses to tailor their marketing strategies and meet consumers’ needs and wants.

Problem Recognition: 

The first stage in consumer decision-making is problem recognition, where consumers become aware of a need or want they want to fulfill. These needs or want can be triggered by internal factors, such as hunger or thirst, or external factors, such as advertising or a friend’s recommendation. Once consumers recognize a need or want, they begin seeking information to fulfill that need or want.

Information Search: 

Once the consumer has recognized a problem or need, the next step in the decision-making process is to gather information. Consumers seek information from various sources, including personal sources such as family and friends, commercial sources such as advertisements and salespeople, and public sources such as online reviews and ratings.

The amount and type of information consumers gather can vary depending on the complexity and cost of the product or service they are considering. For example, a consumer may spend more time researching a high-ticket item like a car or a house while making a quick decision for a low-ticket item like a pack of gum.

During this stage, consumers may also create a list of criteria that they will use to evaluate different options. These criteria could include price, quality, brand reputation, features, and other factors important to the consumer.

Businesses must understand where consumers search for information and what information they seek. By providing accurate and helpful information through various channels such as websites, social media, and customer service, businesses can influence decision-making and increase the likelihood of purchasing.

Evaluation of Alternatives:

Consumers consider the options available during the evaluation stage based on their information search. They evaluate each option and compare them against each other to determine which option will best meet their needs and preferences. Consumers use different criteria to evaluate products, such as price, quality, features, brand reputation, and availability. They may also seek recommendations from others or consult reviews and ratings to gather more information. Ultimately, consumers aim to select the option that offers them the most value and benefits.

Purchase Decision:

Consumers purchase the product or service after evaluating the alternatives. At this stage, consumers may still experience doubts or uncertainty, so businesses can take steps to reduce the risk and reassure consumers. This includes offering warranties, money-back guarantees, and excellent customer service.

Besides reducing risk, businesses can use marketing tactics to encourage purchase decisions, such as limited-time offers, discounts, and promotions. Consumers may also consider convenience, availability, and delivery options when deciding.

Once the decision is made, consumers move on to the final stage of the decision-making process, post-purchase evaluation.

Post-Purchase Evaluation: 

After purchasing a product, consumers will evaluate their level of satisfaction with the purchase. This evaluation can be positive or negative, influencing their future purchase behavior. Customers are more likely to repurchase the product or even recommend it to others if they are satisfied. On the other hand, if the customer is dissatisfied, they are less likely to repurchase the product. They may even share their negative experience with others, harming the company’s reputation.

Post-purchase evaluation can also include cognitive dissonance, discomfort or doubt arising after purchasing. Consumers may question whether they made the right choice or if they should have chosen a different product or brand. Companies can reduce cognitive dissonance by providing reassurance and support after purchasing, such as follow-up communication, warranties, and return policies.

Habitual Buying Behavior: 

Habitual Buying Behavior is a buying decision where consumers make purchases without much thought or effort. This is common when consumers buy low-cost, frequently purchased items like groceries or personal care products. Habitual buying behavior is driven by experience, brand loyalty, and convenience. Consumers in this category may not actively seek information or evaluate alternatives before purchasing. Instead, they rely on habit and convenience to guide their decision-making.

Limited Decision-Making: 

Limited decision-making occurs when consumers already have some prior knowledge of the product or service but still need to gather more information to make an informed decision. In this stage, consumers consider a few alternatives before purchasing. They may rely on personal experience, recommendations from friends and family, or online reviews to narrow their choices. This type of decision-making is common for products or services that are moderately important and require some research but are not considered high-risk purchases. Examples include buying a new smartphone, choosing a restaurant for dinner, or selecting a new brand of laundry detergent.

Extensive Decision-Making:

Extensive decision-making occurs when a consumer faces a high level of risk or investment in a product or service. The consumer will devote significant time and effort to researching and evaluating multiple options. They may seek information from multiple sources, such as online reviews, recommendations from friends or family, and expert opinions. The decision-making process may take several days or even weeks, and the consumer will carefully weigh the pros and cons of each option before making a final decision. Examples of products or services that may require extensive decision-making include buying a house or a car or choosing a university to attend.

Impulse Buying: 

Impulse buying refers to making purchases on a whim without prior planning or decision-making. Consumers engage in this type of buying behavior due to various reasons, such as a sudden desire or need for a product, emotional state, or attractive sales promotions. Impulse buying is often associated with low-priced products or readily available services, such as snacks, magazines, or cosmetics. However, it can also occur with high-priced items like electronics or luxury goods. Retailers often use various marketing techniques, such as product placement or in-store displays, to encourage impulse buying and increase sales.

Advertising and Persuasion: 

Advertising significantly shapes consumer behavior. Businesses use this powerful tool to influence consumer preferences and promote their products or services. 

Advertising and other marketing forms use various strategies to persuade consumers to make purchases, including emotional appeals, fear appeals, humor, and celebrity endorsements.

One of the most critical aspects of advertising is creating a solid brand identity. A brand represents the personality and values of a company, and it helps consumers identify with a particular product or service.

Effective branding and advertising can create a sense of trust and loyalty in consumers, increasing sales and revenue for the company.

Advertisements also shape consumer attitudes and perceptions about products and services. 

By highlighting the benefits and features of a particular product, advertising can create a positive perception in the minds of consumers. This can lead to increased demand for the product and a competitive advantage over other brands.

Additionally, advertising can create a sense of urgency or FOMO (fear of missing out) in consumers, encouraging them to purchase quickly. This is often done through limited-time offers, sales, or discounts. By creating a sense of urgency, advertising can help drive sales and increase revenue.

Advertising and marketing play a significant role in shaping consumer behavior. Businesses can influence consumer decision-making and drive sales by creating strong brand identities, shaping consumer attitudes and perceptions, and creating a sense of urgency.

The Role of Social Media: 

Social media has become a powerful tool in shaping consumer behavior. With the rise of social media platforms, businesses have gained new opportunities to connect with their customers and potential customers.

Social media platforms allow businesses to target specific audiences with personalized messages, making reaching their target market easier. For example, a business selling fitness equipment can target people interested in fitness and health-related topics on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Include TikTok likes in your list to reach out to audiences. Increase your TikTok follower count and request them to share your content on their profiles.

Social media also allows customers to share their experiences with products and services, whether positive or negative. These reviews and comments can influence the purchasing decisions of others considering the same product or service.

In addition, social media influencers have become a popular way for businesses to promote their products. Influencers are people who have a large following on social media and can impact the opinions and behaviors of their followers. Businesses can reach a wider audience and potentially increase sales by partnering with influencers.

Overall, social media significantly impacts consumer behavior, and businesses should use it to connect with their customers and promote their products or services.

Branding and Brand Loyalty: 

Branding is essential to a business marketing strategy. The brand represents the company’s identity and helps create a loyal customer base. A strong brand can influence consumer behavior in many ways, including creating brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty is when customers repeatedly purchase products from a particular brand due to their positive experiences with the brand. Brand loyalty results from consistently delivering quality products or services, excellent customer service, and positive customer experiences.

Effective branding can create a unique identity for a business, differentiate it from its competitors, and create a strong emotional connection with customers. Businesses can achieve this by developing a brand that aligns with their target audience’s values, needs, and interests. This emotional connection leads to brand loyalty, where customers become committed to the brand and often choose its products over its competitors.

Brand loyalty can also be influenced by brand extensions, where a company expands its product line to include related products. This strategy can reinforce brand loyalty by offering customers more choices within the brand they already trust.

Branding plays a crucial role in creating and maintaining a loyal customer base. By developing a strong brand that resonates with customers, businesses can influence consumer behavior and create lasting relationships with their customers.

The Power of Endorsements and Influencers: 

Celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing are powerful tools businesses use to persuade consumers to buy their products or services. When a celebrity or influencer endorses a product, it can greatly influence consumer behavior.

Celebrities and influencers often have a large following on social media, and their fans tend to trust and admire them. Endorsing a product can create a sense of credibility and trust in the product or service, leading followers to consider buying it.

Influencers also use their platforms to create engaging content that showcases the product or service in a relatable and appealing way. This content can range from product reviews to tutorials, influencing consumer behavior and leading to more purchases.

In addition to social media, celebrities and influencers are often featured in traditional advertising campaigns, such as print ads or television commercials. This exposure can also influence consumer behavior and create a sense of trust and credibility in the brand.

Celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing can be effective strategies for businesses to increase brand awareness, build consumer trust, and drive sales.

Online shopping trends: 

The rise of e-commerce has revolutionized how consumers shop and have significantly impacted consumer behavior. Online shopping has made it easier and more convenient for consumers to browse and purchase products anywhere and anytime. This has led to several changes in consumer behavior, including

Increased price sensitivity: With easy access to online shopping, consumers can quickly compare prices from multiple retailers and choose the most cost-effective option. As a result, many consumers have become more price-sensitive and are more likely to search for the best deals before purchasing.

Greater product variety:

E-commerce platforms offer a wide range of products, from niche items to popular brands, which has led to greater product variety and selection for consumers.

Convenience and speed:

Online shopping allows consumers to shop anytime and from any location, eliminating the need to visit a store physically. Additionally, many e-commerce platforms offer fast and convenient delivery options, making it easy for consumers to receive their purchases quickly.

Increased trust in online reviews:

Many consumers rely on reviews and ratings to make informed purchase decisions. This has led to a greater emphasis on transparency and authenticity in product reviews and has given rise to the importance of influencer marketing and user-generated content.

Mobile Commerce: 

Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, has revolutionized how consumers purchase. With the rise of smartphones and mobile apps, consumers can now shop anywhere and anytime. This has led to a significant shift in consumer behavior, as more and more people prefer to shop using their mobile devices.

One of the main benefits of m-commerce is convenience. Consumers no longer have to visit physical stores to purchase; they can use their mobile devices to order products online. This has made shopping more accessible and efficient for consumers and has contributed to the growth of e-commerce.

Another critical aspect of m-commerce is mobile payments. Many consumers now use mobile payment services such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet to make purchases, eliminating the need for cash or credit cards. This has made the checkout process faster and more streamlined, increasing online transactions’ security.

Mobile devices have also enabled retailers to provide personalized shopping experiences for their customers. Using data analytics and location-based technology, retailers can send targeted promotions and offers to consumers based on their preferences and location. This has helped to increase customer engagement and loyalty.

Overall, the rise of e-commerce has significantly impacted consumer behavior and fundamentally changed the way we shop. As technology evolves, m-commerce will likely play an increasingly important role in retail.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR): 

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have revolutionized the shopping experience by enabling consumers to visualize products more effectively. AR allows customers to view products in their real-world surroundings through their mobile devices. At the same time, VR offers a more simulated experience, allowing customers to interact virtually with products and environments. 

These technologies can increase customer engagement, reduce product returns, and provide a more personalized shopping experience. They also provide retailers with valuable data on customer behavior and preferences. As AR and VR continue to advance, they are expected to significantly impact the future of consumer behavior and the retail industry.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Personalization: 

Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly prevalent in the retail industry, with many companies leveraging it to provide a personalized shopping experience for consumers. AI can make personalized product recommendations and create customized marketing messages tailored to each consumer by analyzing past purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographic information. This level of personalization can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty and drive sales for retailers. 

AI is also being used to improve the efficiency of online shopping, with features such as chatbots and virtual assistants helping customers navigate the buying process and answer their questions.

Cross-Cultural Consumer Behavior: 

Cross-Cultural Consumer Behavior studies how culture influences consumer behavior across cultures and societies. Culture significantly shapes people’s values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors towards products and services. As such, companies operating in multiple countries or with a diverse customer base must consider the cultural differences of their target audience and adapt their marketing strategies accordingly.

For example, in some cultures, bargaining is an essential part of the purchasing process, while it is considered inappropriate in others. Similarly, the concept of time varies among cultures, with some cultures placing a high value on punctuality while others prioritize flexibility and social relationships.

Moreover, cultural differences can also impact the interpretation and perception of marketing messages, leading to potential misunderstandings or offensive content. Therefore, companies need to conduct thorough research on their target audience’s cultural norms and values to create effective and culturally sensitive marketing campaigns.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory: 

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory is a framework for understanding how culture influences behavior. Developed by social psychologist Geert Hofstede, the theory identifies six cultural dimensions that can help explain differences in consumer behavior across different cultures:

Power Distance: This dimension refers to the degree to which people in a culture accept and expect power to be distributed unequally. In cultures with high power distance, there is a strong hierarchy; people in positions of authority are respected, and deference is expected. There is a more egalitarian approach in cultures with low power distance; people expect to be treated fairly regardless of their position.

Individualism vs. Collectivism: This dimension describes how people in a culture prioritize individual vs. group needs. In individualistic cultures, people tend to be more independent and prioritize personal goals and achievements. In collectivistic cultures, people tend to value the needs and goals of the group or community over individual desires.

Masculinity vs. Femininity: This dimension refers to the degree to which a culture values stereotypically masculine or feminine traits. Cultures that score high on masculinity tend to value competition, assertiveness, and success. Cultures that score high on femininity value cooperation, caring for others, and quality of life.

Uncertainty Avoidance: This dimension describes how a culture is comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. People prefer structure, rules, and predictability in cultures with high uncertainty avoidance. In cultures with low uncertainty avoidance, people tend to be more open to change and uncertainty.

Long-term vs. Short-term Orientation: This dimension describes the degree to which a culture values long-term vs. short-term thinking and planning. In cultures with a long-term orientation, people prioritize values such as perseverance, thrift, and respect for tradition. People tend to value immediate rewards and results in cultures with a short-term orientation.

Indulgence vs. Restraint: This dimension refers to the degree to which a culture values indulgence and pleasure-seeking vs. restraint and self-control. Cultures that score high on indulgence tend to prioritize enjoyment and fun, while cultures that score high on restraint value self-discipline and responsibility.

Understanding these cultural dimensions can help businesses tailor their marketing and advertising strategies to better resonate with consumers in different cultures.

Localizing Marketing Campaigns: 

Localizing marketing campaigns refer to adapting marketing strategies and messages to specific cultures and markets. This involves considering cultural norms, values, and beliefs to create marketing messages that resonate with the local audience.

Brands that successfully localize their marketing campaigns can build stronger connections with consumers, increase brand awareness, and drive sales. 

Brands can localize their marketing efforts by translating content into local languages, using local celebrities or influencers in advertising, and incorporating local customs and traditions into campaigns.

However, it’s important to note that localization is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Each market and culture is unique, and brands must conduct thorough research and analysis to create effective localized campaigns.

Qualitative Research Methods: 

Qualitative Research Methods: Focus Groups, Interviews, and Observational Research

Qualitative research methods collect non-numerical data to gain insights into consumer behavior. These methods are used to understand consumer attitudes, opinions, and beliefs.

Focus Groups:

Focus groups are small group discussions led by a moderator. Participants are chosen based on their demographics or buying behavior and are asked questions about their attitudes toward products, brands, or marketing messages. Focus groups provide rich qualitative data, allowing marketers to understand the motivations behind consumer behavior better.

Interviews:

Interviews are one-on-one conversations between a researcher and a consumer. Like focus groups, interviews can provide deep insights into consumer attitudes and behaviors. Interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing.

Observational Research:

Observational research involves observing consumers in their natural environment without intervening. This method is useful for understanding how consumers behave in real-life situations rather than how they say they behave in a survey or focus group. Observational research can be conducted in person or through video recordings.

Qualitative research methods can provide valuable insights into consumer behavior, but they have limitations. These methods are time-consuming and expensive, and the results may not be generalizable to the broader population. Therefore, quantitative research methods are often necessary to confirm qualitative research findings.

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Quantitative Research Methods: 

Quantitative research methods gather numerical data and measure consumer behavior on a large scale. Surveys and experiments are two commonly used quantitative research methods in consumer behavior research.

Surveys involve collecting data from a large sample size using standardized questionnaires. Surveys can be conducted through various methods such as phone calls, mail, or online. Surveys can help researchers gather data on consumer preferences, behavior, and attitudes toward products or services.

Experiments involve manipulating one or more variables to measure the impact on consumer behavior. These experiments can be conducted in a controlled environment or real-life situations. For example, a company may test different pricing strategies in certain stores to see how it impacts consumer behavior.

Qualitative and quantitative research methods are essential in understanding consumer behavior and developing effective marketing strategies.

Observational Research: 

Observational research involves observing and analyzing consumer behavior in a natural or controlled environment. 

This method can gain insights into how consumers interact with products, make purchase decisions, and behave in different situations. Observational research can be conducted in various settings, such as stores, online, or in people’s homes.

Observational research is particularly useful in situations where consumers may not be able to articulate their behavior or attitudes or when they may be influenced by social desirability bias in their responses. By observing consumers in a natural or controlled environment, researchers can gather more objective data on their behavior and make more accurate predictions about their future actions. However, it can be difficult to draw definitive conclusions from observational research alone, as it may not provide insights into the underlying reasons for consumer behavior.

Neuromarketing: 

Neuromarketing is a relatively new field that seeks to understand how consumers’ brains respond to marketing stimuli. It combines neuroscience with marketing research to identify what consumers truly want and how they respond to marketing messages.

Using techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and eye-tracking, neuromarketing can measure consumers’ subconscious reactions to marketing stimuli, including ads, product packaging, and even store layout. This allows companies to create more effective marketing campaigns and improve customer experience.

While there is still some controversy around the ethics of using neuromarketing to influence consumer behavior, it is becoming increasingly popular among companies looking to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and stay ahead of the competition.

Marketing Ethics: 

Ethical considerations are crucial when marketing and advertising to consumers. Unethical marketing practices can negatively affect both the brand and the consumer. 

Some ethical considerations businesses should consider:

Marketers should be honest in advertising and not make false claims about their products or services. Misleading advertisements can harm the consumer and damage the brand’s reputation.

Transparency: 

Marketers should be transparent about their products or services, including their features, benefits, and limitations. This helps consumers make informed decisions and builds trust with the brand.

Marketers should respect consumers’ privacy and not use their personal information without their consent. This includes not sharing or selling consumer data to third parties.

Social Responsibility: 

Marketers should consider the impact of their advertising on society and ensure that their messages do not promote harmful behaviors or stereotypes.

Sustainability: 

Marketers should consider the environmental impact of their products or services and promote sustainable practices.

Marketers should treat all consumers fairly and not discriminate based on race, gender, or socioeconomic status.

Regulation: 

Marketers should comply with all applicable laws and regulations related to advertising and marketing.

By incorporating these ethical considerations into their marketing practices, businesses can protect the consumer, enhance their brand reputation, and build a loyal customer base.

Deceptive Advertising: 

Deceptive advertising is intentionally or unintentionally misleading, false, or deceptive advertising. This is a serious ethical issue as it can harm consumers and damage a company’s reputation. To avoid deceptive advertising, companies should ensure their claims are truthful, accurate, and not likely to mislead consumers.

Here are some ways to avoid deceptive advertising:

Be truthful: 

Advertisements should not make false claims or exaggerate a product’s or service’s benefits.

Disclose important information: 

Companies should provide accurate information about their products or services, including risks or limitations.

Use clear and understandable language: 

Advertisements should use language that is easy for consumers to understand, avoiding complex or technical terms.

Avoid stereotypes and discrimination: 

Advertisements should not use stereotypes or discriminatory language that may offend or alienate certain groups.

Respect consumer privacy: 

Companies should respect consumers’ privacy by obtaining consent before using their personal information for marketing purposes.

Comply with regulations:

 Companies should comply with advertising regulations and laws related to false advertising, unfair competition, and privacy.

By following these ethical principles, companies can build a reputation for honesty and integrity, leading to greater consumer trust and loyalty.

The Dark Side of Consumer Behavior: 

Consumer behavior can negatively affect individuals and society through addiction, materialism, and environmental harm. To mitigate these adverse effects, companies and policymakers can take several steps:

Promote responsible consumption: Encourage consumers to make responsible choices and sustainably use products and services.

Promote education:  

Educate consumers about the impacts of their choices and behaviors and how they can make more informed and responsible decisions.

Regulate marketing practices:

 Governments can regulate marketing practices to prevent deceptive or harmful advertising and ensure that companies are transparent about their products and services’ environmental and social impacts.

Encourage ethical practices:

Companies should prioritize ethical practices and transparency in their operations, including supply chains, environmental impact, and labor practices.

Encourage conscious capitalism:  

Businesses can embrace conscious capitalism, prioritizing business decisions’ social and environmental impacts alongside financial gains.

By taking these steps, companies and policymakers can help mitigate the adverse effects of consumer behavior and promote a more responsible and sustainable approach to consumption.

Consumer behavior studies how and why consumers make purchasing decisions.

Factors that affect consumer behavior include personal, psychological, social, and situational factors.

The consumer decision-making process includes problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase evaluation.

Types of buying decisions include habitual buying behavior, limited decision-making, extensive decision-making, and impulse buying.

Marketing and advertising, technology, and culture all influence consumer behavior.

Research methods for studying consumer behavior include qualitative and quantitative methods and neuromarketing.

Ethical considerations in consumer behavior include avoiding deceptive advertising and mitigating negative effects.

Content Marketer at SurveySparrow

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Compulsive Buying Behavior: Clinical Comparison with Other Behavioral Addictions

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1 Ciber Fisiopatología Obesidad y Nutrición (CIBERObn), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Barcelona, Spain

2 Departament de Psicobiologia i Metodologia de les Ciències de la Salut, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Fernando Fernández-Aranda

3 Pathological Gambling Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Bellvitge University Hospital-IDIBELL, Barcelona, Spain

4 Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Gemma Mestre-Bach

Trevor steward, marta baño, amparo del pino-gutiérrez.

5 Nursing Department of Mental Health, Public Health, Maternal and Child Health, Nursing School, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Laura Moragas

Núria mallorquí-bagué, neus aymamí, mónica gómez-peña, salomé tárrega, josé m. menchón.

6 Ciber de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Barcelona, Spain

Susana Jiménez-Murcia

Compulsive buying behavior (CBB) has been recognized as a prevalent mental health disorder, yet its categorization into classification systems remains unsettled. The objective of this study was to assess the sociodemographic and clinic variables related to the CBB phenotype compared to other behavioral addictions. Three thousand three hundred and twenty four treatment-seeking patients were classified in five groups: CBB, sexual addiction, Internet gaming disorder, Internet addiction, and gambling disorder. CBB was characterized by a higher proportion of women, higher levels of psychopathology, and higher levels in the personality traits of novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, persistence, and cooperativeness compared to other behavioral addictions. Results outline the heterogeneity in the clinical profiles of patients diagnosed with different behavioral addiction subtypes and shed new light on the primary mechanisms of CBB.

Introduction

Compulsive buying behavior (CBB), otherwise known as shopping addiction, pathological buying or compulsive buying disorder, is a mental health condition characterized by the persistent, excessive, impulsive, and uncontrollable purchase of products in spite of severe psychological, social, occupational, financial consequences (Müller et al., 2015b ). Whereas, ordinary non-addicted consumers state value and usefulness as their primary motives for shopping, compulsive buyers make purchases in order to improve their mood, cope with stress, gain social approval/recognition, and improve their self-image (Lejoyeux and Weinstein, 2010 ; Karim and Chaudhri, 2012 ; McQueen et al., 2014 ; Roberts et al., 2014 ). Although the aftermath of protracted CBB includes feelings of regret/remorse over purchases, shame, guilt, legal and financial problems, and interpersonal difficulties, people with CBB fail in their attempts to stop compulsive buying (Konkolý Thege et al., 2015 ).

The frequency of CBB has increased worldwide during the two last decades. A recent meta-analysis estimated a pooled prevalence of 4.9% for CBB in adult representative samples, with higher ratios for university students, those of non-community origin and shopping-specific participants (Maraz et al., 2015 ). However, prevalence estimations in epidemiological research vary and can range from 1 to 30% depending on the type of sample studied (Basu et al., 2011 ).

One major difficulty in estimating CBB prevalence is that the categorization of this psychopathological condition in international classification systems continues to be debated and consensus on diagnosis criteria has yet to be reached. As a matter of fact, the concept of “addiction” itself was a contentious subject matter in the preparation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ; Piquet-Pessôa et al., 2014 ). Currently the available operational definitions for CBB have relied on similarities with disorders in the impulsive control spectrum (Potenza, 2014 ; Robbins and Clark, 2015 ), mainly linked to substance use disorders (Grant et al., 2013 ), obsessive-compulsive disorder (Weinstein et al., 2015 ), eating disorders (Fernández-Aranda et al., 2006 , 2008 ; Jiménez-Murcia et al., 2015 ) and other behavioral addictions such as gambling disorder (Black et al., 2010 ), Internet gaming disorder (IGD) and Internet addiction (Suissa, 2015 ; Trotzke et al., 2015 ), and sexual addiction (Derbyshire and Grant, 2015 ; Farré et al., 2015 ).

The specific etiology of CBB is still unknown. Diverse factors have been proposed as likely contributors and the few CBB studies conducted to date have largely been centered on neurobiological factors, with research on genetic factors and CBB being nonexistent. As in substance use disorders, brain imaging studies in people with CBB and other behavioral addictions have consistently found abnormalities in frontoparietal regions, reward processing, and limbic systems (Raab et al., 2011 ; Baik, 2013 ; Leeman and Potenza, 2013 ; Probst and van Eimeren, 2013 ; Vanderah and Sandweiss, 2015 ). However, the presently available neurological evidence does not fully explain how concrete neural mechanisms and cognitive processes can cause normal-shopping behavior to become addictive in the absence of exogenous drug stimulation (Clark, 2014 ; Engel and Caceda, 2015 ). Unlike in other addictive conditions, it has been stated that the development of CBB depends on the presence of particular cultural mechanisms, such as a market-based economy, a wide variety of available goods, disposable income, and materialistic values (Unger et al., 2014 ).

Regarding the CBB phenotype, research studies highlight shared common features with other behavioral addictions (El-Guebaly et al., 2012 ; Choi et al., 2014 ; Grant and Chamberlain, 2014 ; Di Nicola et al., 2015 ). Gray's Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory, which has been applied to other behavioral addictive disorders, argues that high levels of behavioral approach system (BAS) predispose individuals to engage in impulsive behaviors (Franken et al., 2006 ). It has also been used to explain the addictive processes underlying CBB: both reinforcement-punishment systems seem to participate in the onset and development of this disorder (Davenport et al., 2012 ). Although in clinical samples, a greater association has been found between this disorder and higher levels of behavioral activation (Claes et al., 2010 ; Müller et al., 2014 ). Furthermore, dysfunctional emotion regulation also seems to be implied in the phenotype of behavioral addictions, particularly in aspects such as managing cravings and withdrawal symptoms(Kellett et al., 2009 ; Williams and Grisham, 2012 ).

The early onset of problematic behavior is also considered a common feature of these addictive activities, and epidemiological research has found that addictive behaviors tend to become problematic in late adolescence (Balogh et al., 2013 ; Maraz et al., 2015 ). It is during this stage of development when impulsivity and risky behaviors may be most socially tolerated or even promoted by peers, which could constitute a potential risk factor for developing an addiction (Dayan et al., 2010 ; Hartston, 2012 ). It must be highlighted however that some representative surveys in Europe in the recent years have demonstrated increases in the estimated prevalence of behavioral addictions in older adult populations (Mueller et al., 2010 ).

The study of the CBB phenotype and related personality traits has also generated consistent results with other behavioral addictions. Research has shown that compulsive buying is characterized by high impulsivity scores, novelty seeking and compulsivity (Black et al., 2012 ; Di Nicola et al., 2015 ; Munno et al., 2015 ), along with high levels in both positive and negative urgency traits (Rose and Segrist, 2014 ), coinciding with the findings obtained in gambling disorder (Janiri et al., 2007 ; Tárrega et al., 2015 ), IGD or in sexual addictions (Jiménez-Murcia et al., 2014b ; Farré et al., 2015 ).

Finally, CBB is associated with significant comorbidity, particularly with psychiatric conditions that are also highly prevalent in other behavioral addictions (Mueller et al., 2010 ; Aboujaoude, 2014 ), such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use, other impulse control disorders, and eating disorders (Fernández-Aranda et al., 2006 , 2008 ).

Heterogeneous features in both clinical and personality aspects have also been reported when comparing CBB with other behavioral addictions. Firstly, epidemiological studies point to strong sex differences (Fattore et al., 2014 ): whereas CBB is more prevalent in women (Otero-López and Villardefrancos, 2014 ), gambling disorder (Ashley and Boehlke, 2012 ), and sexual addiction (Farré et al., 2015 ) are more prevalent in men.

Regarding CBB patients' psychopathological state, to our knowledge few studies with clinical samples have assessed the specific differences between CBB and other behavioral additions. As such, the objectives of this study are: (a) to ascertain the most relevant socio-demographic and clinical characteristics associated to CBB in a large clinical sample of patients with behavioral addictions; and (b) to compare the CBB profile with other behavioral addictions (sexual addiction, IGD, Internet addiction, and gambling disorder).

Materials and methods

All the patients who arrived at the Pathological Gambling Unit in the Psychiatry Department at Bellvitge University Hospital in Barcelona (Spain), from January 2005 to August 2015, were potential participants in this study. Exclusion criteria for the study were the presence of an organic mental disorder, intellectual disability, or active psychotic disorder. Bellvitge University Hospital is a public hospital certified as a tertiary care center for the treatment of behavioral addictions and oversees the treatment of highly complex cases. The catchment area of the hospital includes over two million people in the Barcelona metropolitan area.

All participants were diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria (SCID-I; First et al., 1996 ) and using specific questionnaires for each disorder. Interviews were conducted by psychologists and psychiatrists with more than 15 years of experience in the field.

The study sample included n = 3324 patients, who were classified into five groups according to their diagnostic subtype: CBB ( n = 110), sexual addiction ( n = 28), IGD ( n = 51), Internet addiction ( n = 41), and gambling disorder ( n = 3094). Mutual exclusivity criterion was required to include the patients in the groups, that is, the addictions considered in this study did not occur at the same time to allow for the estimation and comparison of the specific clinical state of each behavioral addiction type (39 patients were excluded from our analyses for meeting the criteria of having more than one behavioral addiction).

Evaluation of current and lifetime substance use disorders and impulsive related behaviors

Patients were assessed using a structured clinical face-to-face interview modeled after the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-I; First et al., 1996 ), covering the lifetime presence of impulsive behaviors, namely alcohol and drug abuse, comorbid impulse control disorders (such as CBB, sexual addiction, and IGD and Internet addiction).

Diagnostic questionnaire for pathological gambling according to DSM criteria (Stinchfield, 2003 )

This 19-item questionnaire allows for the assessment of DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994 ) diagnostic criteria for pathological gambling (in the present study called GD). Convergent validity with the SOGS scores in the original version was very good [ r = 0.77 for representative samples and r = 0.75 for gambling treatment groups (Stinchfield, 2003 )]. Internal consistency in the Spanish adaptation used in this study was α = 0.81 for the general population and α = 0.77 for gambling treatment samples (Jiménez-Murcia et al., 2009 ). In this study, the total number of DSM-5 criteria for GD was analyzed. Cronbach's alpha in the sample was very good (α = 0.81).

South oaks gambling screen (SOGS) (Lesieur and Blume, 1987 )

This self-report, 20-item, screening questionnaire discriminates between probable pathological, problem, and non-problem gamblers. The Spanish validated version used in this study has shown excellent internal consistency (α = 0.94) and test-retest reliability ( r = 0.98; Echeburúa et al., 1994 ). Consistency in the sample of this work was adequate (α = 0.76).

Diagnostic criteria for compulsive buying according to Mcelroy et al. ( 1994 )

These criteria have received wide acceptance in the research community, although their reliability and validity have not yet been determined (Tavares et al., 2008 ). It's worth noting that no formal diagnostic criteria for CBB have been accepted for the DSM or the ICD−10. At present, it is recommended that CBB diagnosis be determined via detailed face−to−face interviews which explore “buying attitudes, associated feelings, underlying thoughts, and the extent of preoccupation with buying and shopping” (Müller et al., 2015b ).

Diagnostic criteria for IGD according to Griffiths and Hunt ( 1995 , 1998 )

To assess IGD diagnosis and to establish the level of dependence on video games, clinical experts conducted a clinical face-to-face interview considering the scale designed by Griffiths and Hunt ( 1995 , 1998 ). This interview evaluated aspects such as the frequency of the problematic behavior, the interference generated in daily functioning because of maladaptive use of video games or the presence of tolerance and difficulties in abstinence management.

Diagnostic criteria for sexual addiction according to DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000 )

To assess sexual addiction, a battery of items was administered, which were based on the proposed definition in the DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000 ) in the Sexual Disorders Not Otherwise Specified section (302.9). In making our assessment, the following clinical description was given special weight: “distress about a pattern of repeated sexual relationship involving a succession of lovers who are experienced by the individual only as things to be used.”

Diagnostic criteria for internet addiction according to Echeburúa ( 1999 )

To assess Internet addiction, a clinical interview that adapts the nine criteria from Echeburúa ( 1999 ) in yes/no responses was used. Four to six scores indicate a risk of dependency and 7–9 an already established problem. Internet addiction categorization is focused on excessive and continuous use of the Internet (social networking, watching videos, television series, and movies online, etc.). These items also explore the urge to carry out this behavior or the failed attempts to reduce its frequency.

Temperament and character inventory-revised (TCI-R) (Cloninger, 1999 )

The TCI-R is a reliable and valid 240-item questionnaire which measures seven personality dimensions: four temperament (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, and persistence) and three character dimensions (self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence). All items are measured on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The scales in the Spanish revised version showed adequate internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha α mean value of 0.87; Gutiérrez-Zotes et al., 2004 ). Cronbach's alpha (α) in the sample used in this study is in the good to excellent range (index for each scale is included in Table 2 ).

Symptom checklist-revised (SCL-90-R) (Derogatis, 1990 )

The SCL-90-R evaluates a broad range of psychological problems and psychopathological symptoms. This questionnaire contains 90 items and measures nine primary symptom dimensions: somatization, obsession-compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism. It also includes three global indices: (1) a global severity index (GSI), designed to measure overall psychological distress; (2) a positive symptom distress index (PSDI), to measure symptom intensity; and (3) a positive symptom total (PST), which reflects self-reported symptoms. The Spanish validation scale obtained good psychometrical indexes, with a mean internal consistency of 0.75 (Cronbach's alpha; Martínez-Azumendi et al., 2001 ). Cronbach's alpha (α) in the sample of this study is in the good to excellent range (indexes for each scale are included in Table 2 ).

Alcohol use disorders identification test (AUDIT) (Saunders et al., 1993 )

This test was developed as a simple screening method for excessive alcohol consumption. AUDIT consists of 10 questions examining alcohol consumption levels, symptoms of alcohol dependence and alcohol-related consequences. Internal consistency has been found to be high, and rest-retest data have suggested high reliability (0.86) and sensitivity around 0.90; specificity in different settings and for different criteria averages 0.80 or more. Three categories were considered for this study, based on the ranges defined by Reinert and Allen ( 2002 ): null-low (raw scores under 6 for women and under 8 for men), abuse (raw scores between 6 and 20 for women and between 8 and 20 for men) and risk of dependence (raw scores above 20).

Additional data

Demographic, clinical, and social/family variables related to gambling were measured using a semi-structured, face-to-face clinical interview described elsewhere (Jiménez-Murcia et al., 2006 ). Some of the CBB behavior variables covered were the age of CBB onset, the mean and maximum monetary investment in a single shopping episode, and the total amount of accumulated debts.

The present study was carried out in accordance with the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. The University Hospital of Bellvitge Ethics Committee of Clinical Research approved the study, and signed consent was obtained from all participants. Experienced psychologists and psychiatrists conducted the two face-to-face clinical interviews.

Statistical analysis

Statistical analysis was carried out with Stata13.1 for Windows. First, the comparison of the sociodemographical, clinical and personality measures between the derived empirical clusters was based on chi-square tests (χ 2 ) for categorical variables and analysis of variance (ANOVA) for quantitative measures. Cohen's- d measured the effect size of pairwise comparisons (| d |> 0.50 was considered moderate effect size and | d |> 0.80 high effect size). Bonferroni-Finner's correction controlled for Type-I error due to multiple statistical comparisons for variables measuring clinical state.

Second, a multinomial model valued the capacity of the participants' sex, age, age of onset, education level, civil status, and personality traits levels to discriminate the presence of CBB compared to the other behavioral addictions (gambling, Internet, IGD, and sexual addiction). This model constitutes a generalization of the logistic regression to multiclass-nominal-criteria (dependent variables with more than two categorical levels). Its parameters are estimated to predict the probability of the different categories compared to a reference category-level. In this study, with the aim of obtaining a discriminative model for the presence of CBB, this diagnostic subtype was defined as the reference level. In addition, the set of independent variables was simultaneously included into the model to determine the specific contribution of each variable in identifying CBB. The global predictive capacity of the model was assessed using the McFadden pseudo-R 2 coefficient.

Third, multiple regressions models valued the predictive capacity of the participants' sex, age, age of onset, and personality traits on the psychopathology symptom levels registered on the SCL-90-R depression, anxiety and GSI scales. The ENTER procedure was used to simultaneously include the set of predictors to obtain the specific contribution of each factor to symptom levels.

Evolution of the prevalence of consultations for behavioral addictions

Figure ​ Figure1 1 shows the prevalence of patients attending the specialized unit for treatment because of CBB in comparison to other behavioral addictions (gambling disorder, sexual addiction, IGD, or Internet addiction). The prevalence of consultations due to CBB increased from 2.48% in 2005 to 5.53% in 2015, obtaining a significant linear trend (χ 2 = 17.3, df = 1, p = 0.006) and no statistically significant deviation from linearity (χ 2 = 7.27, df = 9, p = 0.609). Our results demonstrate that the prevalence of gambling disorder was significantly higher compared to the other behavioral additions. As a whole, the prevalence of consultations was higher for CBB compared to IGD, Internet, and sexual addiction (except for IGD in 2015), but these differences were low.

Evolution of the prevalence of consultations due to different behavioral addictions .

Comparison between CBB and the other behavioral additions

Table ​ Table1 1 contains the difference between diagnostic subtypes and the patients' sociodemographical variables, as well as data on substance abuse. The frequency of women in the CBB group (71.8%) was clearly higher when compared to the other diagnostic conditions (between 3.6% for sex addiction to 26.8% to Internet addiction). Considering other variables, CBB was characterized by: (a) a higher level of education compared to IGD and gambling addiction; (b) higher prevalence of being married or living with a partner compared to the IGD and Internet addiction groups; (c) higher levels of employment compared to IGD; and (d) compared to gambling disorder, lower prevalence of smoking, and alcohol abuse and other drug use/abuse.

Comparison between diagnostic subtypes for categorical variables: chi-square test and contrasts of buying subtype vs. the other diagnostic subtype .

Table ​ Table2 2 includes mean comparisons between CBB and other diagnostic subtypes for the variables measuring clinical state: patients' age, age of onset, and duration of the problematic behaviors, psychopathological symptoms (SCL-90-R scales) and personality traits (TCI-R scales). No statistical differences emerged comparing CBB with the sexual addiction group. Compared to IGD, Internet addiction and gambling disorder, the CBB clinical profile was characterized by: (a) higher mean age and age of onset compared to IGD and Internet addiction; (b) as a whole, higher psychopathological symptoms (many SCL-90-R scales obtained higher mean scores); and (c) higher mean scores in the personality traits novelty seeking, harm avoidance (in comparison with gambling disorder), reward dependence (in comparison with IGD and gambling disorder), persistence (in comparison with IGD and Internet addiction), and cooperativeness (in comparison with IGD and gambling disorder).

Comparison of clinical profiles between diagnostic subtypes at baseline: ANOVA and effect size for pairwise comparisons .

Figure ​ Figure2 2 includes two radar-charts to graphically summarize the clinical and personality profiles for the different diagnostic subtypes in the most relevant variables of the study. The percentage of women was plotted for gender distribution and the z-standardized scores in the own sample for the quantitative clinical measures (standardization was made due to the different ranges –minimum to maximum values– of these variables).

Radiar-charts for the main clinical variables in the study and personality traits .

Discriminative model for the presence of CBB compared to other behavioral addictions

Table ​ Table3 3 contains the results of the multinomial model measuring the discriminative capacity of patients' sex, age, age of onset, education level, marital status, and personality profile. Compared to all the other diagnostic subtypes, the probability of CBB is clearly higher in women and individuals with higher scores in the personality traits novelty seeking, harm avoidance and self-directedness. However, it should be noted that scores on self-directedness were in the clinically low range for all groups when considering general population normative scores. The opposite pattern emerges in the case of harm avoidance, in that all diagnostic groups were in the clinically high range, with those with CBB scoring the highest. In addition, older age is predictive of CBB compared to Internet and IGD, higher education levels increased the probability of CBB compared to gambling disorder, and moderate levels of persistence (rather than low) are more likely in CBB compared to Internet and IGD.

Discriminative capacity of age, age of onset, studies level, civil status, and personality profile in the presence of a diagnostic subtype (n = 3.324) .

Bold, significant coefficient. Models obtained with multinomial regression entering simultaneously the set of predictors (ENTER procedure) (McFadden-R 2 = 0.283) .

Predictive models of psychopathology symptoms for the CBB group

Table ​ Table4 4 contains the three multiple regressions measuring the predictive capacity of the patients' sex, age, age of onset, and personality traits profile on levels of depression, anxiety, and GSI-index measured through the SCL-90-R for the CBB group ( n = 110). High levels of depression were associated with women and patients with high scores in novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and cooperativeness, but low levels in reward dependence and self-directedness. High anxiety was registered for women, and those patients with high scores in harm avoidance and low scores in self-directedness. High GSI scores were linked to women; obtaining high scores in novelty seeking, harm avoidance and self-transcendence; and low scores in self-directedness.

Predictive capacity of age, age of onset, and personality traits in the psychopathology symptom levels for the CBB group ( n = 110) .

Models obtained with multiple regression entering simultaneously the set of predictors (ENTER procedure). Bold, significant coefficient .

This study analyzed the specific characteristics of CBB compared to other behavioral addictions: gambling disorder, Internet gaming disorder, Internet addiction and sexual addiction. The results obtained in a large sample of treatment-seeking patients show that although CBB could likely be related to other addictive behaviors, significant differences in its phenomenology exist. CBB is characterized by a higher proportion of women, older age and age of onset, poorer general psychopathological state and higher levels of novelty seeking and harm avoidance and moderate levels of reward dependence, persistence, and cooperativeness. In this sense, CBB patients could be described as being curious, easily bored, impulsive and active seekers of new stimuli and reward, but at the same time showing pessimism and worry in anticipation of upcoming challenges. Several sociocultural contributors might also take part in the onset and maintenance of CBB, such as one's personal financial state, materialistic values, and the variety of goods available (Dittmar, 2005 ). One should also take into account the fact that in hoarding, one of the most commonly reported symptoms is acquiring behavior, and that other studies have identified numerous similarities between the two disorders (Frost et al., 2002 ). Clinical differences are lower compared to sex addiction and higher compared to gambling disorder, IGD, and Internet addiction.

Regarding gender, differences between diagnostic subtypes emerged in this study: the CBB group included a considerably higher proportion of women compared to other behavioral addictions. This result is consistent with other studies, which had also reported higher levels of compulsive buying in women (Fattore et al., 2014 ; Otero-López and Villardefrancos, 2014 ). Possible reasons for the elevated prevalence of women with CBB are most likely related to the higher frequency of shopping as a recreational activity in this group and other related socio-cultural factors (Maraz et al., 2015 ).

Results of this study also show that the proportion of patients attending our specialized unit for CBB treatment had a tendency to increase during the last decade, with a similar trend occurring for Internet, IGD and sexual addictions. However, these proportions of treatment-seeking patients were significantly lower compared to the number of consultations for gambling disorder. With regards to the evolution of the proportion of CBB consultations during the last decade, our results point to a drop between the years of 2010 and 2013, coinciding with the worst years of the economic crisis in Europe, and, more specifically, in Spain. Moreover, this decrease is consistent with results exploring other behavioral addictions requiring substantial amounts of money. In the case of gambling disorder, a significant drop in prevalence was also found during the European economic crisis (Jiménez-Murcia et al., 2014b ), especially in 2010.

Patients' age and the mean age of onset of problematic addictive behaviors greatly differed between diagnostic subtypes, with older ages being found in CBB (mean age was 43.3 years and mean onset 38.9, nearly followed by gambling disorder and sex addiction) and younger ages for IGD (mean age 22.0 and mean onset 19.9 in this study). This finding dovetails with several studies reporting that young age is linked to problematic video game and Internet use (Griffiths and Meredith, 2009 ; Achab et al., 2011 ; Jiménez-Murcia et al., 2014a ). Other variables, such as the endorsement of materialistic values among young people, should be considered in the scientific literature as an effective mediator of the young age of onset in some addictive behaviors, particularly in the case of compulsive buying (Dittmar, 2005 ).

Differences in the psychological state and personality traits between the diagnostic subtypes are also relevant: CBB and sexual addiction showed similar profiles, with their psychopathological symptoms and personality scores being clearly worse than for gambling, IGD, and Internet addictions. Although in behavioral addictions, impulsivity appears to be a core feature (Dell'Osso et al., 2006 ; Billieux et al., 2012 ; Lorains et al., 2014 ), multiple studies also show the existence of high levels of compulsivity (Blanco et al., 2009 ; Fineberg et al., 2010 ; Bottesi et al., 2015 ). Impulsivity and compulsivity seem to be characterized by deficits in self-control capacity. Nonetheless, a key distinction between impulsivity and compulsivity is that the former is associated with immediate gratification and reward seeking, while compulsion is aimed at finding relief from negative emotions.

Overall, the findings obtained in this study show that this combination of symptoms (impulsive/compulsive) is especially prominent in CBB and sexual addiction. This leads us to postulate the existence of phenotypical and possibly endophenotypical overlap across these disorders. This results support previous research that has found numerous shared features in CBB and sexual addiction (Müller et al., 2015a ) and other behavior addictions (Lejoyeux et al., 2008 ; Villella et al., 2011 ). However, a notable difference in the sex prevalence of both disorders (higher proportion of women in CBB and of men in sex addiction) exists. This fact may partly explain why the similarities between these disorders have hardly been explored (Álvarez-Moya et al., 2007 ). Lastly and quite possibly due to higher awareness of this condition, the number of GD patients was vastly higher than the other behavioral addictions examined in this study. Future studies should aim to use larger, more diverse samples in order to overcome this drawback. The role of materialistic values and hoarding are also topics that should be considered. However, our findings should be considered in light of their limitations and we stress that the features of treatment-seeking patients in a single unit for behavioral addictions does not necessarily reflect the actual frequency of an addiction in the origin population. The lack of consensus regarding the diagnostic criteria for the behavioral additions examined in the study also limits the generalizability of our results.

The results of this study suggest that CBB should be considered as a behavioral addiction, in the same manner as other excessive behaviors (such as sexual addiction, gambling, IGD, or Internet addiction). At present, an integrative model for describing the underlying mechanisms which lead to the onset and development of the CBB is not available. Additional empirical evidence is needed to identify core contrasting factors so as to clarify whether CBB represents a distinct psychiatric entity or is better conceptualized as an epiphenomenon of other psychiatric disorders characterized by addictive and/or impulse control behaviors. As with most complex, multifaceted-multidimensional processes, these studies should cover different areas: neurobiological (to recognize implicated regions, networks, and executive/cognitive functions), clinical (to dispose of the complete patient phenotype and to identify distinct developmental trajectories of the condition), and psycho-socio-cultural (to clarify what consumer-culture and financial resources interact with psychological, individual, and personality traits to lead to an increase in buying behavior).

Ultimately, a detailed understanding of the CBB will allow for improving prevention and treatment efforts. New empirical studies are required to gain a better understanding of the etiology of CBB and to establish more effective intervention programs.

Author contributions

RG, FF, JM, ST, and SJ designed the experiment based on previous results and clinical experience of AD, MB, LM, NA, NM, and MG. RG, GM, TS, FF, and SJ conducted the experiment, analyzed the data, and provided a first draft of the manuscript. SJ, TS, GM, RG, and FF further modified the manuscript.

This manuscript and research was supported by grants from Instituto de Salud Carlos III (FIS PI11/00210, FIS14/00290, CIBERObn, CIBERsam, and Fondos FEDER) and PROMOSAM (PSI2014-56303-REDT). CIBERObn and CIBERSAM are both an initiative of ISCIII. This study was cofunded by FEDER funds/European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)—a way to build Europe and by a Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad grant (PSI2015-68701-R).

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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