The Science Behind Retail Therapy (2024)

FAQs

Is retail therapy scientifically proven? ›

Retail therapy can improve your mood. It has been proven that unplanned shopping can help relieve negative moods. Interestingly, resisting the urge to buy something has similar mood-boosting effects.

The surge of dopamine during impulse buying creates a sense of immediate gratification, where individuals experience an intense and instant emotional high. However, this pleasure is short-lived, and once the dopamine levels return to normal, buyers may face feelings of regret or guilt over their impulsive decisions.

Retail therapy is an emotionally driven act of buying for pleasure. It is a way to ease distress or enjoy doing and having something different. Retail therapy may activate neurotransmitters such as dopamine and endorphins that improve your mood.

Retail therapy is the act of shopping primarily to lift your mood. Usually, it's a short-lived habit that's either sporadic or meticulously planned, but always with the intent to alleviate some form of emotional or psychological distress.

And, it's not necessarily a bad way to handle emotional distress. As long as you stay within budget, retail therapy can have a positive impact on your mental health. A few of the reasons why shopping makes you feel good are: It focuses your attention on one thing (and something that makes you happy!).

Sex, shopping, smelling cookies baking in the oven — all these things can trigger dopamine release, or a "dopamine rush." This feel-good neurotransmitter is also involved in reinforcement.

Generally, a person will be having emotions of loneliness, depression, feel out of control in a particular area, and seek to spend money in order to relieve the stress. Spending addiction is a symptom or flashing red-light warning sign that there are deep-rooted feelings one is trying to avoid facing.

Interestingly, Harry Gordon Selfridge has been described in a Guardian feature as the inventor of Retail Therapy, when he opened his new concept store in 1909.

"Retail therapy" is one method of stress relief that many people use consciously or unconsciously—it's the act of buying yourself a little something to boost your mood when you're feeling low, and it may be more common than you think.

When faced with uncomfortable feelings like anxiety and depression they will feel the need to go shopping. In this case, spending money provides a brief reprieve from negative emotions. Living in a materialistic society can add to and agitate the problem, but causes are likely deeper.

How does shopping addiction affect the brain? ›

As they shop, their brain releases endorphins and dopamine, and over time, these feelings become addictive. A professor in applied health sciences, Engs claims that 10 to 15 percent of the population may be predisposed to these feelings.

The act of buying something can also trigger the same release of dopamine into the brain. And that's why you might feel the urge to buy something whenever you don't feel that well. You're just craving dopamine because that's what makes you feel good.

Research has shown that making shopping decisions can help reinforce a sense of personal control over our environment. It can also ease feelings of sadness. A 2014 study from the Journal of Consumer Psychology found that retail therapy not only makes people happier immediately, but it can also fight lingering sadness.

The Walmart Effect is a term used to refer to the economic impact felt by local businesses when a large company like Walmart (WMT) opens a location in the area. The Walmart Effect usually manifests itself by forcing smaller retail firms out of business and reducing wages for competitors' employees.

Exposure therapy has been scientifically proven to be a safe and effective treatment for a variety of psychological issues.

Therapy leads to fewer relapses of anxiety and mild-to-moderate depression than medication use alone[10]. Short-term therapy can provide long-term benefits – a study found that PTSD patients displayed less severe symptoms two years after treatment ended, compared to six months after treatment ended[11].

Physical therapy has been found to be effective for improving outcomes, both in terms of pain and function, in multiple musculoskeletal conditions.

It is a relatively new type of therapy and does not have the large body of research behind it that some other types of therapy do. However, a small group of studies have found that it may offer relief. Some research suggests it may ease symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).