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Retail therapy is shopping with the primary purpose of improving the buyer's mood or disposition. Often seen in people during periods of depression or transition, it is normally a short-lived habit. Items purchased during periods of retail therapy are sometimes referred to as "comfort buys."
Retail therapy was first used as a term in the 1980s with the first reference being this sentence in the Chicago Tribune of Christmas Eve 1986. "We've become a nation measuring out our lives in shopping bags and nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy."
In 2001, the European Union conducted a study finding that 33% of shoppers surveyed had "high level of addiction to rash or unnecessary consumption'." [1] This was causing debt problems for many with the problem being particularly bad in young Scottish people.
Researchers at Melbourne University have advocated its classification as a psychological disorder called oniomania or compulsive shopping disorder. [2]
Retail therapy need not be a negative term. It can be a neutral term that describes the pleasures of the total shopping experience, used by many people to boost their mood. Shopping as a way of boosting one's mood does not necessarily involve rash or inadvisable purchases. Retailers may view the entertainment aspect of their stores as a means of boosting store traffic, so that some of those customers make purchases, but not necessarily inappropriate or inadvisable ones.
Retail addiction or shopping addiction should be considered a separate and serious problem. The term "therapy" by definition implies a treatment for a problem (here, depression or stress), not a problem itself. Retail therapy may be the wrong treatment in many cases, but it is not, by definition, dangerous or problematic.
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