UF Study: Recreational Shoppers Search For Happiness, Completed Selves

September 29, 1999

GAINESVILLE —The lovelorn and forlorn are more likely to be shopworn people who fill their empty lives by spending money in stores and spilling their hearts out to sales clerks, a new University of Florida study finds.

Recreational shoppers — “shopaholics” who shop for recreation and entertainment — also are more likely to fantasize when trying on clothing, becoming attached to, and even infatuated with, articles before buying them, said Michael Guiry, who did the research for his doctoral dissertation in marketing at UF.

“For most recreational shoppers, shopping is much more than an act to make a clothing purchase,” he said. “It is a pathway to self-confirmation, self-preservation and self-affirmation. The shopper’s yellow brick road seems just like Dorothy and her friends, who were searching for happiness and a completed self, in The Wizard of Oz.’”

Understanding the recreational shopper may even offer insight into the darker side of the behavior, when consumers become obsessed with shopping to the point that it becomes a compulsive and addictive behavior and serves as a remedy for an empty self, he said.

Guiry surveyed 561 people — students at Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and nonstudents in the New York metropolitan area — about how frequently they shopped and what shopping meant to them. He also used various psychological scales to assess the results.

He found that the 119 recreational shoppers in the survey group were more likely to be materialistic, compulsive buyers and to have lower self-esteem than the 404 nonrecreational shoppers. (Thirty-eight were not classified because they did not answer a question). In addition, recreational shoppers were younger, had lower incomes and were more likely to be female.

Recreational shoppers savor the whole shopping experience, whether it be simply browsing or stopping to eat dinner in the mall, said Guiry, who graduated from UF in 1999 and now is a marketing professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Trips to the mall appeal to the recreational shoppers’ sense of adventure, becoming expeditions to uncover hidden treasures, Guiry said. Avid bargain shoppers regularly hit the sales racks, constantly on the prowl for good buys, he said.

Recreational shoppers also report engaging in fantasy, playing games of make-believe while trying on clothing, Guiry said. They became attached to clothing and products long before buying them, thinking constantly about them, the study found.

“One person characterized her infatuation with a piece of clothing as feeling like she was being haunted by the object,” he said. “She could not escape her obsession until she gave in to her craving and purchased the article.”

Often their shopping sprees were inspired by emotions. “The onset of emotional grief, mental anguish or a bad mood propelled recreational shoppers into the market place at a moment’s notice,” Guiry said. “They would look for relief from their melancholy or anxiety, hoping to find psychological uplift in the retail setting of their choice.”

Recreational shoppers also are more likely to chat with sales clerks, feeling better about themselves when doing so, the study found.

Although shopping is a way of life in a contemporary consumer society, little is known about the recreational shopper, Guiry said. Consumers of all ages spend more time in shopping malls than anywhere else except home, work and school, leading some to suggest that malls have become modern-day community centers and society’s new town squares, he said.

“Michael’s work can be extrapolated beyond recreational shopping to other forms of experiential consumption,’ such as theme parks, white-water rafting and designer’ vacations,” said Richard Lutz, a UF marketing professor who supervised Guiry’s research. “Consumer motives and behaviors when they are buying experiences rather than products remain a largely unexplored frontier as we enter the next millennium.”