The Emotional Shopper: Assessing the Effectiveness of Retail Therapy

The Emotional Shopper: Assessing the Effectiveness of Retail Therapy examines the question to what extent retail therapy really works. The monograph reviews the extant literature on shopping behavior and emotions, and adopts a tripartite approach to provide a more systematic and holistic treatment of this subject. The author assesses whether retail therapy works according to three perspectives: (1) motivational, (2) behavioral, and (3) emotional. Shopping is seen as a hedonic experience that triggers a variety of emotions. The incidence (or lack) of these specific emotions when consumers shop is examined. The Emotional Shopper: Assessing the Effectiveness of Retail Therapy first reviews some conceptual foundations of the notion of retail therapy, including its definition and scope as well as the scales that researchers have developed to measure it. Next, it delves into the three aforementioned perspectives, assessing the effectiveness of retail therapy from each perspective by discussing and analyzing relevant work that has adopted the particular perspective. Finally, the author concludes with a general discussion of the main findings as well as some questions and directions for future research.