title: The case for moderate-risk buyers: An empirical investigation.
abstract: Despite recent increase in research on compulsive buying and excessive buying, the category of buyers whose buying patterns are approaching the clinical level but still somewhat below it has rarely been recognized in the literature. In this paper, we propose the case for the category of moderate-risk buyers. Following Ridgway et al.'s (2008) findings, moderate-risk buyers were operationalized as scoring 21-24 on Compulsive Buying Index. We hypothesized that moderate-risk buyers would hold significantly higher materialistic values than non-compulsive buyers, while exhibiting significantly less depressive symptoms and covert narcissism than full-fledged compulsive buyers. An online survey of individuals who frequently engaged in buying lapses was used (N=809). We found that moderate-risk buyers were significantly different from both compulsive buyers and non-compulsive buyers in the frequency of buying lapses, hiding purchases and frequency of experiencing negative feelings leading to buying lapses. Furthermore, consistent with our hypothesis, moderate-risk buyers held significantly lower covert narcissism and depression than full-fledged compulsive buyers, but their materialism was not significantly different from each other. Our findings support the case for moderate-risk buyers as a separate group from full-fledged compulsive buyers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Home Economics Education/Consumer Science, Dongguk University, Jangchungdong 2-ga, 100-715 Seoul, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: jjwchc@naver.com.
authors.forename: Joowon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.affiliation: Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G2W1 Canada. Electronic address: syi@uoguelph.ca.
authors.forename: Sunghwan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003132:Commerce; D003192:Compulsive Behavior / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003258:Consumer Behavior / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009289:Narcissism; D057181:Pleasure; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012649:Self Concept; D012945:Social Values; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Compulsive buying; Covert narcissism; Depression; Materialism; Moderate-risk buyers