We’re all probably aware of the term retail therapy, but do we actually know what it means, and what happens when shopping goes to unhealthy levels? This is the topic we’ll be exploring today in this article. I hope you find it interesting.
What Is Retail Therapy?
Retail therapy and shopping addiction are two related but distinct behaviours. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, retail therapy is the act of shopping to improve one’s mood or alleviate stress. It can provide a temporary boost in happiness and excitement and can be a harmless way to treat oneself occasionally. However, it’s important to note that retail therapy is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment.
Retail therapy involves buying things you want but don’t always need, and what you buy and how much it can positively affect you can be very individual. For some, buying clothes and spending money on jewellery or limited-edition trainers might be the only way to scratch that retail therapy itch, while for others, buying a chocolate bar can be enough (Cleveland Clinic, 2024a).
What Is Shopping Addiction?
Shopping addiction, also known as compulsive buying disorder and oniomania is a behavioural addiction characterised by an uncontrollable urge to shop. This makes it different from retail therapy, where there is control over their spending habits.
Someone with a shopping addiction will keep buying things even when it leads to financial problems, even when they’re already neck deep in financial problems. It can and will cause relationship difficulties as well as lead to other negative consequences as a result of their shopping addiction. Even though such people may experience intense feelings of guilt or shame after shopping, they are unable to stop themselves. This is what makes it an addiction.
Shopping addiction can have many causes, but just like with other addictions, it can be the result of a coping strategy going wrong. When we turn to drinking when feeling down or stressed, that can quickly become our go-to strategy whenever we’re feeling that way, and before we know it, we’re unable to stop drinking without support. This same pathway to addiction can form with retail therapy if we let it get out of hand.
Retail Therapy Vs Shopping Addiction
Retail therapy has many accepted, happy hormone rewards outside of the act of making a purchase, such as enjoying the shopping process, trying on clothes and testing out products, and the praise these purchases can often lead to (Rose and Dhandayudham, 2014). For example, being told how good we look in a new item of clothing. Then there are the benefits of stress and anxiety reduction that these behaviours can also bring.
Dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins are the main chemicals our bodies release when we engage in shopping and shopping behaviours (Cleveland Clinic, 2024a), which is why people can still enjoy window shopping.
A study by Sheehan, Stephens, Bamford, Rogers, Cook, and Skelly (2024) was conducted over six months to investigate people’s splurging habits. The study used participants from 23 countries and totalled nearly 15,000 participants’ data on their splurging habits. This makes their study very generalisable.
The study found that splurging was a global phenomenon, with three out of four participants splurging at least once over the last month. This was despite 42% of those participants saying they couldn’t afford that splurge. This is important because it highlights how retail therapy can become an unhealthy behaviour.
This could also suggest the start of an addiction forming. This would be characterised by impulsivity and compulsivity, where someone may be unable to resist their impulse, drive, or temptation, in this case, to buy something, even if it is harmful to them (i.e. can’t afford it; Rose and Dhandayudham, 2014).
However, just because someone might struggle with their impulse to make purchases from time to time, that doesn’t mean they’re experiencing shopping addiction. We all like the occasional treat, even when we shouldn’t. Thus, we also need the other key part, compulsivity, for it to be an addiction.
Thus, retail therapy done right can lead to lasting positive impacts on mood (Atalay and Meloy, 2011), which makes this an important distinction between retail therapy and shopping addiction. This means a splurge is fine if we’re able to rein it in when needed.
Because we’ve become accustomed to shopping when we’re sad, which can often be caused by a feeling of a lack of control, retail therapy can return some of that sense of control, reducing sadness. At least that was the hypothesis behind Rick, Pereira, and Burson‘s (2014) study. They conducted three experiments to investigate this connection, finding that making shopping choices helped mitigate sadness, and restored a sense of personal control over their environment.
This is supported by Atalay and Meloy (2011), who state that negative moods that lead to retail therapy are linked to impulsivity and a lack of personal control, along with helping to cheer someone up.
According to Maraz, Griffiths, and Demetrovics (2016), they found that 5% of the populations of 16 countries from 40 studies, which provided 32,000 data sets, exhibited compulsive buying behaviours. This suggests that there’s a surprisingly high rate of possible shopping addiction. In the UK, shopping addiction is believed to affect 8-16% of the population (Priory, n.d.).
As I’ve previously said, shopping addiction, like other addictions, is defined by a compulsion to engage in an activity, despite its negative consequences for them (Spinks, 2023).
However, these negative consequences affect more than just the person engaging in their shopping addiction, as it has rippling consequences for their family and their social and occupational lives (Murali, Ray, and Shaffiullha, 2012).
Because of these negative consequences rippling out, they can make already existing loneliness and rejection sensitivity worse or cause them to develop. In other words, there’s a strong relationship between rejection sensitivity and loneliness with shopping addiction, and thus, a lower sense of wellbeing (Cassidy and Adair, 2021).
The line between retail therapy and shopping addiction can be blurry, so it can be beneficial to be aware of the signs of shopping addiction. Such signs are a preoccupation with shopping (Murali, Ray, and Shaffiullha, 2012), buying more than we can afford, hiding purchases from loved ones, feelings of guilt and shame after shopping, and shopping to cope with negative emotions.
Other behaviours, according to Cleveland Clinic (2024), included shopping being your default, shopping being either your main or only hobby, buying things you don’t need or don’t use, and always having to make returns.
Loneliness and sensitivity to rejection are also risk factors for shopping addiction while having good social support networks, a strong sense of resilience, and believing in our abilities are protective factors against shopping addiction (Cassidy and Adair, 2021).
Remember, at the core of all addictions are underlying issues which, at first, might not seem related to the addictions themselves. But as humans, we often try to avoid uncomfortable issues, and one way we may do that is via shopping, such as a way to manage mental health issues like anxiety or depression (Spinks, 2023), but also issues like abuse.
Addiction, is, after all, associated with high rates of psychiatric comorbidity (Murali, Ray, and Shaffiullha, 2012). This is why it’s a problem if we programme ourselves to fill our emotional voids with escapisms like shopping (Cleveland Clinic, 2024).
The blurred line between retail therapy and shopping addiction can be further complicated by the online shopping landscape we now find ourselves living in. Shopping online has revolutionised consumer behaviours, and changed the landscapes of our High Street as a result (Eliasch, 2025).
But there have been downsides to this. This ability to shop 24/7, offers a level of convenience never seen before. According to Keskin and Günüç (2017), in the real world, we have a tangible way of recognising if we’ve bought too many things because we can physically see and feel the weight of the items we’ve bought. However, shopping online removes that tangible factor.
Furthermore, we can quickly forget how long we’ve been shopping online as we sit in the comfort of our homes with the TV or music on in the background. Whereas, in a real-world shopping situation, you’ll likely start to feel tired, and if you’re anything like me, your back and knees will be hurting.
Thus, our phones give us access to around-the-clock shopping, which makes it easy to engage in retail therapy, but also the development and worsening of shopping addiction (Eliasch, 2025).
Summary
It’s ok to indulge from time to time so you can treat yourself occasionally. What’s life without a little indulgence? But it’s about being able to balance that with everything else because moderation is always the key (Cleveland Clinic, 2024a).
If you are concerned that you may have a shopping addiction, especially if it’s getting you into debt, then it is important to seek professional help. There are many effective treatments available, such as cognitive-behavioural therapy and medication.
As always, leave your feedback in the comments section below. Also, please share your experiences with retail therapy and shopping addiction in the comments section below. Don’t forget, if you want to stay up-to-date with my blog, you can sign up for my newsletter below. Alternatively, click the red bell icon in the bottom right corner to get push notifications for new articles.
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References
Atalay, A. S., & Meloy, M. G. (2011). Retail therapy: A strategic effort to improve mood. Psychology & Marketing, 28(6), 638-659. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/download/107914201/8df9f1b646b4900b8dd33849f6e898c5.pdf and https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20404.
Cassidy, T., & Adair, Z. (2021). Psychological aspects of shopping addiction: initial test of a stress and coping model. International Journal of Psychological and Brain Sciences, 6(2), 29-35. Retrieved from https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/91048448/10.11648.j.ijpbs.20210602.12.pdf.
Cleveland Clinic. (2024, July). How to tell if you’re addicted to shopping. Cleveland Clinic. Retrieved from https://health.clevelandclinic.org/shopping-addiction.
Cleveland Clinic (2024a, December). Why ‘Retail therapy’ makes you feel happier. Cleveland Clinic. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/retail-therapy-shopping-compulsion.
Eliasch. (2025, January). The Dangers of Online Shopping Addiction: A Growing Concern. Online Trading Foundation. Retrieved from https://onlinetradingfoundation.com/the-dangers-of-online-shopping-addiction-a-growing-concern.
Keskin, A. D., & Günüç, S. (2017). Testing models regarding online shopping addiction. Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions, 4(2). Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/download/56719544/addictaAutumn2017_221_242.pdf.
Maraz, A., Griffiths, M. D., & Demetrovics, Z. (2016). The prevalence of compulsive buying: a meta-analysis. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 111(3), 408–419. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13223, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26517309, and https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/27158/1/PubSub4615_Griffiths.pdf.
Murali, V., Ray, R., & Shaffiullha, M. (2012). Shopping addiction. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 18(4), 263-269. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/F10AD81750294E96D87E771DD6248812/S135551460001662Xa.pdf.
Priory. (n.d.). Time to checkout your addiction: why we shop and shop – and how to stop. Priory. Retrieved from https://www.priorygroup.com/media-centre/time-to-checkout-your-addiction-why-we-shop-and-shop-and-how-to-stop.
Rick, S. I., Pereira, B., & Burson, K. A. (2014). The benefits of retail therapy: Making purchase decisions reduces residual sadness. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24(3), 373-380. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1057740813001149 and https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/141061/jcpy373.pdf.
Rose, S., & Dhandayudham, A. (2014). Towards an understanding of Internet-based problem shopping behaviour: The concept of online shopping addiction and its proposed predictors. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 3(2), 83-89. Retrieved from https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/3/2/article-p83.xml.
Sheehan, E., Stephens, B., Bamford, R., Rogers, S., Cook, J., & Skelly, L. (2024, August). For consumers, splurges aren’t just lipstick. Deloitte Insights. Retrieved from https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/retail-distribution/consumer-behavior-trends-state-of-the-consumer-tracker/splurge-spending-inflation-lipstick-index.html.
Spinks, L. (2023, December). Shopping addiction. UK Addiction Treatment Centres. Retrieved from https://www.ukat.co.uk/addiction/behavioural/shopping.
We live in a world were people need to keep up to the newest and greatest thing on the internet which in the end can be a never ending thing as there is always something that we think we need. i can see why it can become an adiction like just about anything in life.
Thanks for commenting