What Do We Know When We Know a Compulsive Buying Person? Looking at Now and Ahead

Abstract

Over the last few decades, research has seamlessly confirmed the marked multicausal nature of compulsive buying, since variables from different realms (e.g., family, social, and contextual domains) have demonstrated their explanatory capacity. However, it has been personality variables that have, to a greater extent, aroused the interest of researchers, leading to what is now a cumbersome richness of personal constructs of different nature that seem to require some arrangement under integrative frameworks. The proposal by McAdams under the suggestive title of “What do we know when we know a person?” is, in this regard, especially attractive and thought-provoking. McAdams approaches us to the person as a whole by establishing three differentiated levels (dispositional traits, personal concerns or characteristics adaptations, life story), and it will be precisely these levels that will become the structure we will use to address the state of the art on compulsive buyers. The location of the multiple personal variables analyzed at each of the levels with a common grammar will allow us to identify what it is known, as well as what remains to be done in each space. Lastly, suggestions for the future are given, with particular emphasis on advancing our understanding of the person from each of the academic vantage points but also the suitability of designing studies that integrate and/or build bridges between dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and life narratives. The hope is that research in the coming years satisfactorily integrates the different visions of the person to achieve a more comprehensive, nuanced portrait of a person with compulsive buying problems.

Pathological buying on the rise? Compensative and compulsive buying in Poland in the pre- and (Post-)pandemic times

“…In this study, an attempt is made to identify the variables that would determine GCBI scores in the examined populations. Materialism proved to be the strongest predictor of higher GCBI, which is reported in studies carried out worldwide on the samples representing general populations as well as on such specific samples as university students, adolescents, and clinical samples [ 18 ]. It was already O’Guinn and Faber [ 5 ] who pointed to the positive correlation between both variables.…”

“…This expectation of a negative correlation between self-esteem and compulsive buying expressed in H2 is confirmed by the obtained data; however, it cannot be ruled out that the predictive ability of self-esteem related to compulsive buying becomes weaker if the behaviour takes place online. The recent research points to this possibility [ 18 ]. The disappearance of the demonstrative dimension from e-compensative buying, which means that a buyer’s purchase act cannot be observed by others and the buyer’s belief about the admiration of this act by others cannot be created (it is in itself a source of compensation), might be an explanation.…”

“…Studies on compensative and compulsive buying can be split into two basic groups: those that are carried out on typologically representative samples (then the results describe only individuals included in the sample) and those that are based on statistically representative samples (then the results can be generalized for the entire population that the sample represents) [ 18 ]. The presented study, which fits into the latter trend, was conducted in three waves in 2010 (fieldwork 14–26 June), 2019 (5–9 April), and 2022 (9–13 December) each time among about 1,000 respondents.…”

“…Finally, excessive compensation through acts of purchase might turn into compulsive buying. An important role of materialism in predicting compensative and compulsive buying has been evidenced by numerous studies [ 18 ], starting with the one by O’Guinn and Faber [ 5 ].…”

“…The pandemic, especially at the first stage, when the vaccines were not available at all and the mass media reported thousands of deaths a day from the coronavirus, may have strengthened people’s causal external orientation and thus the feeling that nothing depends on human will. This probably resulted in a lower level of self-efficacy, which is reported in the literature as a factor supporting susceptibility to compulsive buying [ 18 ]. As a result, behaviours such as compensative and compulsive buying might have been treated by individuals as an escape from the undesired psychical states and problems of everyday life shaped by the pandemic.…”