Advancements in understanding problematic behaviors require the ability to identify affected or at-risk individuals. This article reports the development of a scale to identify compulsive buyers. Seven items representing specific behaviors, motivations, and feelings associated with buying significantly contributed to correctly classifying approximately 88 percent of the subjects. Evidence indicates this screening scale is unidimensional and possesses good reliability. Validity is demonstrated by comparing members of a general consumer sample who are identified as compulsive buyers by the screener with self-identified compulsive buyers and noncompulsive consumers on several established correlates and outcomes of compulsive buying. Evidence of external validity using a separate sample is also presented.

Compulsive buying is framed within the larger category of compulsive consumption, and both quantitative and qualitative data are used to provide a phenomenological description. Results indicate people who buy compulsively are more likely to demonstrate compulsivity as a personality trait, have lower self-esteem, and are more prone to fantasy than more normal consumers. Their primary motivation appears to be the psychological benefits derived from the buying process itself rather than from the possession of purchased objects. Consequences of compulsive buying include extreme levels of debt, anxiety and frustration, the subjective sense of loss of control, and domestic dissension.

This research investigated impulse buying as resulting from the depletion of a common—but limited—resource that governs self-control. In three investigations, participants' self-regulatory resources were depleted or not; later, impulsive spending responses were measured. Participants whose resources were depleted, relative to participants whose resources were not depleted, felt stronger urges to buy, were willing to spend more, and actually did spend more money in unanticipated buying situations. Participants having depleted resources reported being influenced equally by affective and cognitive factors and purchased products that were high on each factor at equal rates. Hence, self-regulatory resource availability predicts whether people can resist impulse buying temptations.

Several authors have articulated the need for broader theories or models to account for multiple forms of compulsive or addictive consumption. Development of these broader theories requires more information regarding the overlap and interrelationship of specific consumption disorders. Two studies are presented here to examine the comorbidity of compulsive buying and eating disorders involving binge eating. Study 1 found that women diagnosed as having binge eating disorder had significantly greater compulsive buying tendencies than nonbinge eaters of similar weight. Study 2 showed that compulsive buyers were more likely to have engaged in binge eating, had more symptoms characteristic of both binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa, and were more likely to be clinically diagnosed as having an eating disorder than a matched control group.