Compulsive buying is a shopping addiction with worldwide prevalence that causes significant emotional, financial, and social problems for those afflicted by it. While most research has focused on the problem and its consequences, this book examines the intersections between consumer traits, self-regulation, ethical considerations, and compulsive buying. Compulsive Buying: Consumer Traits, Self-Regulation and Marketing Ethics presents a model on consumer trait predictors of compulsive buying as well as guidelines for consumers, government policymakers, and companies.

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Since Thorstein Veblen's groundbreaking book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1918)—which coined the expression "conspicuous consumption"—researchers have studied consumer's shopping habits. Beyond the goal of satisfying basic needs, Why do consumers buy? For enjoyment, status, indulgence, social interaction, self-affirmation? And what makes some people become compulsive buyers—shopaholics, unable to say "no"? Looking back over the literature on the subject and their own personal conversations with friends and colleagues, coauthors Smith and Wedderburn develop and put forth a consumer traits model of the compulsive buyer based on demographics and psychographics. This work ultimately attempts to suggest a set of business ethics about marketing to compulsive shoppers and some policy ideas informed by these ethical considerations. Recommended for graduate students, faculty, and professionals.