KOREASCHOLAR

The concept of retail therapy which refers to “the phenomenon in which consumers buy things to make themselves feel better” (Kacen, 1998) has been used by the U.S. retail firms in marketing (Kang & Johnson, 2010). Previous studies found that retail therapy concept was associated to consumption behaviors including compulsive buying (Faber & O’Guinn, 1992; O’Guinn & Faber, 1989). Frost et al. (1998) found that compulsive hoarders show compulsive buying tendencies. O’Guinn and Faber (1989) found that compulsive buyers are more likely to confirm compulsivity as a personality trait with a low self-esteem. Lack of research into association of retail therapy to compulsive consumer behaviors motivated us to pursue this study which investigate relationships among retail therapy, compulsive buying and compulsive hoarding, and to examine the moderating effect of consumers’ personality traits on the relationship between retail therapy and compulsive hoarding. Our research questions are: (1) How retail therapy is related to compulsive buying and compulsive hoarding? and (2) Which personality traits moderate the relationship between retail therapy and compulsive hoarding? Based on the literature review, the following hypotheses were proposed. H1: Retail therapy is positively related to compulsive buying; H2: Compulsive buying is positively related to compulsive hoarding; H3: Retail therapy is positively related to compulsive hoarding & H4: Personality trait moderates the relationship between retail therapy and compulsive hoarding. The researchers used 12 items to measure retail therapy (Kang, 2009), 6 items to measure compulsive buying (Faber & O’Guinn, 1992), 9 items to measure compulsive hoarding (Frost, Sketekee, & Grisham, 2004) 8 items of Big Five Inventory (Rammstedt & John, 2007) and 15 item Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) (Ames, Rose & Anderson, 2006) to measure personality trait based on 7‑point Likert scales (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). The online survey was conducted with college students enrolled at a major Midwestern University. A total of 354 undergraduate and graduate students’ responses were used to analyze data. A principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation was conducted to evaluate the measurement of each construct. The factor loadings were above of 0.60, indicating acceptable convergent validity. Reliabilities with Cronbach’s alphas for retail therapy,compulsive buying, compulsive hoarding and personality trait construct were 0.96, 0.81, 0.90 and 0.81 respectively, exceeding the suggested level of 0.70. Simple linear regression was performed to test hypotheses. The results revealed that F statistic (F(1, 352)=126.53, p =.000) was significant and regression coefficient was statistically significant. Therefore, H1 was supported and consistent with previous findings (Faber & O’Guinn, 1992). The regression coefficient for the path from compulsive buying to compulsive hoarding was statistically significant (F(1, 352)=77.15, p=.000). Therefore, H2 was supported and consistent with Frost et al. (1998)’s study. The retail therapy contributed significantly to the prediction of compulsive hoarding with the statistically significant regression results (F(1, 352)=20.28, p=.000), supporting H3. From the principle component analysis with varimax rotation, four factors were extracted from 23 personality trait measurement items which are labeled as “authority-leadership narcissism”, “self-esteem narcissism”, “positive disposition”, and “negative disposition”. All factor loadings were above 0.60 for their respective factors. Then, the researchers divided one single group into four personality trait groups, using these four factors. 4%, 27.1%, 53.7% & 15.3% participants represented “authority-leadership narcissism”, “self-esteem narcissism”, “positive disposition” & “negative disposition” group respectively. Simple regression analysis was performed to test H4. The regression coefficients for positive disposition group (F(1, 188)=13.19, p=.000) and negative disposition group (F(1, 52)=5.01, p≤.05) were statistically significant. H4 was partially supported. The results indicated that people from two groups characterized by positive/negative personality tend to engage in compulsive hoarding to alleviate their negative feelings or mood. Anyone with narcissistic personality with a high self-efficacy may not be engaged in compulsive hoarding even when a therapeutic treatment is made through shopping. They tend to purchase products for changing their moods, but their therapeutic behavior doesn’t lead to compulsive hoarding, which causes sufferings in the end. The low self-esteem has been presented with people being engaged in compulsive behaviors (Marlatt et al., 1988). These findings can help apparel marketers develop the strategies to upgrade their sellingenvironment entertaining so that their customers’ moods are repaired and customers feel satisfied through therapeutic shopping behavior. This study has a limitation that prevents us from generalizing the results to the young consumer population due to sample size to college students.

• H M Rakib ul Hasan(Ohio University, USA)
• Mijeong Noh(Ohio University, USA)