Affect Regulation

Affect-regulatory shopping is one of the most robust findings in consumer psychology. Atalay and Meloy's 2011 paper in Psychology and Marketing established the empirical baseline; Rick, Pereira, and Burson (2014) replicated and extended it in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. The behavioral signature in e-commerce data includes basket creation in the 22:00 to 02:00 window, single-item baskets, premium-tier outliers in otherwise mid-tier histories, and return-then-repurchase loops. The pattern is healthy in moderation and pathological at the high-frequency tail, where it overlaps with compulsive buying disorder. Mick and DeMoss's 1990 phenomenological study of self-gifts mapped four contexts (reward, therapy, holiday, incentive), with therapy gifts dominated by personal-care and cosmetic items in female samples.