Summary Of Confession Of A Shopaholic

In The myth of the ethical shopper, Hobbes (2015) states that although boycotts may have been successful in 1990, they are failing in 2105. He asserts that the way in which our clothes are now made has changed and so advocacy campaigns just don't work. One of the problems is that retailers don't have direct contact with their factories. Production is outsourced to the lowest bidders. Chains of sub contractors are set up and production is being split between thousands of factories. Labels from JC Penny, Wal-Mart and Joe Fresh were all found in the rubble of Rana plaza (O'Connor 2014), but none of them directly contracted those factories. With multitudes of middlemen accountability is difficult.

“The Signs of Shopping” by Anne Norton mainly talks about the hidden semiotic meanings behind the concept of shopping. She mentioned how women shopped to obtain a sense of self-identities by spending money to possess property(88). The reading also implies that

To be successful in a capitalistic government, you must be willing to step on the heads of those who are below you, and claim their successes as your own. Advertisements within our capitalistic culture act as a way to force the customer into buying what the corporate overlords want you to buy. Anne Norton, author of “The Signs of Shopping” is a heavily published author, and has earned many awards in her field. In her essay, she explains how businesses use advertisement techniques to increase the profits in a retail store. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of “The Science of Shopping” is a staff writer for the New Yorker. In his essay, he explains how Paco Underhill, a retail expert, taught many Forbes 500 companies how to create more opportunities to up-sale to their customers. Norton shows how malls and other shopping outlets only want one demographic to shop in their stores, and Gladwell shows how stores utilize their internal structure to make more money. Both utilize a negative tone toward the business practices shown in the articles, and demonstrate the manipulation of the consumer with the usage of imagery within advertisements to show that capitalism is unethical.

Black Friday shopping is a controversial issue in the United States; while many believe the day after Thanksgiving is a part of holiday festivities, others view it as destructive. Throughout “Black Friday: Consumerism Minus Civilization,” Andrew Leonard argues that the chaos of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in which crowds of Americans shop all night for extremely low prices, lessens the sophistication of Americans and the true meaning of the holidays. People become so consumed in the idea of endless sale prices that they forget to embrace what they already have, such as family, food, and shelter. He believes that Black Friday shopping has become out of control and describes the negative effects of excessive consumerism. he explains how most consumers act completely insane while Black Friday shopping and how society encourages this behavior by creating commercials and advertisements. Furthermore, Leonard states that it hurts the economy and damages one’s mental health. While Leonard is probably wrong when he claims that Black Friday shopping is completely troublesome to America’s well-being, he is right that consumerism overpowers the true significance of Thanksgiving.

Judith Levine wrote the book “Not Buying It’’.It is a nonfiction book about Judith Levine,along with her friend Paul,to go 12 months(1 year)without shopping . Levine researched consumerism and anti-consumerist movements.Judith Levine was led to write “Not Buying It’; because she thought it was “the confession of a woman any reader can identify with.Someone who can’t live without French roast coffee or SmartWool socks,but someone who has reached their limit with our consumption,and its effects on the earth and everyone who dwells here”.

It is believed that about 6% of Americans have a shopping addiction; of the 6% 90% are women. To a shopping addict trips to the mall become the main way to cope with stress, even when it is having a negative impact on the rest of their life. The addiction will affect their relationships and finances. (Omniomania: Shopping Addiction, 2010) It is a never ending merry-go-round; the stress from relationships and finances just reinforces the urge to shop more in order to feel better.

| Janice often accompanies her friends’ on shopping trips. On such occasions, Janice ends up buying more than her friends. She can hardly resist the temptation of buying the products on sale and ends up spending a lot more than she planned to. According to this information, Janice is a(n) _____ consumer.Answer

Shopping can be defined as a compulsive buying behavior. Individuals become addicted to shopping because they see it as a stress relief, which triggers them to do it again. Women are more prone to experience compulsive buying behaviors than men.

“Do you want to go out with us on Mill tonight?” I begrudgingly shake my head no, since I am twenty years old that means I truly have no business being on Mill Ave on a Friday night. Mill Ave offers a movie theater, restaurants, clothing stores, and plenty other places people can spend money, but on a weekend night, Mill Ave is cluttered with booze, and college students. It has somehow become a rite of passage for ASU students to head over to Mill and get as drunk as you can, for the cheapest amount of money. The street is filled with people, some drunk, some loud, and the brave souls that were trying to go to Mill for something other than the bars, people like me. The further into Mill, the drunker people seemed to be. Women were wearing short

In Bookmarks, Possessed by Our Possessions, Diane Cole states, “But never has hoarding been so visible as it is today in westernized societies. Perhaps the abundance of inexpensive and easily accessible objects makes it the disorder of the decade” (Cole 3). This quotes is very relevant to my views on how and why America seemed to be consumed by consumption. This isn’t just a coincidence but, an action that has turned into an emotion. Buying items used to be dependent on necessity but now it is based on the feeling. To buy items people enjoy themselves and it turns into a leisurely activity. Because of the emotion shopping creates, individuals who suffer from depression use this as an outlet and tend to buy at

In the beginning of her essay, she declares that consumerism is a “pernicious problem, an addiction to consumption so out of control that it qualifies as a sickness” (Quindlen 159). The author’s statement could easily offend anyone who is a part of America’s consumer culture and seems very vague in her statement. What qualifies as out of control consumption; buying toys or clothes or is there a limit where it becomes out of control? Quindlen also states that “now much of the country is made up of people with the acquisition habits of a 7-year-old, desire untethered from need, or the ability to pay” (160). This is a very generalized statement that cannot be effectively given because, again, she does not verify exactly what she means. Are the acquisitions of a 7-year-old the desire to buy everything you see? Maybe they are the desires to own every fun new gadget, regardless of need. She also says “much of the country” but leaves her remark at that; how much is “much”? Without any sources, it can easily be assumed she is using her own personal relationships to come to this conclusions which is a biased group and does not represent the country as a whole. Shopping and consumer consumption is a necessary part of the American economy, and Quindlen’s arguments regarding a majority of the country and their reckless spending may only be extreme in a few cases, and reasonable in

Anna Quindlen, a novelist, social critic, and journalist wrote an intriguing essay “Stuff is Not Salvation” about the addiction of Americans, who splurge on materialistic items that have no real meaning. The ability to obtain credit is one of the main reasons to blame for society’s consumption epidemic. However, Quindlen feels the economic decline due to credit card debt is insignificant compared to the underlying issues of American’s binging problems. Quindlen’s essay gives excellent points regarding the differences in America’s typical shopping habits. Additionally, she mentions how people acquire all this “stuff” but seem to never realize, “why did I get this?”(501). Quindlen makes her

For generations, Americans has been brainwashed by the media to believe that what is displayed on television is the ideal perception of what real beauty have manipulated American citizens of what style looks like. Furthermore, with their many brainwashing strategies, that means more and more consumers spending beyond their budget. Our perspectives have been heavily influenced by what they believe is nice, but can we afford it all? With unrealistic combination of goods in store, plazas, and mall, consuming has become a bad behavior of some. In support of my argument of the “Overspending”, author Gladwell’s article “The Science of Shopping” also argues that stores adjust to fit the needs and wants of the shopper are evidently presented. With that being said, we have no idea when we are being manipulated into unrealistic shopping behavior that is influenced by the way the advertisement is presented in visual sight. Author Gladwell gets a “retail anthropologist” and “urban geographer” named Paco Underhill to give breakdown points of how he helps brand name stores influence consumers into persuasion of buying more. However, most of us fall short of that discipline, while being persuaded to overspend during our store visits.

They diagnose the compulsive hoarding syndrome according to three criterions. First, the accumulation of useless possessions and failure to discard them can be a sign of the disorder. Compulsive hoarders have an obsessive need to accumulate and save many objects, and also have a tremendous anxiety about throwing them away. This is because of a supposed need for the objects and their value or an unnecessary emotional attachment to them. If they have any doubt at all about the value of an object, compulsive hoarders will keep it, “just in case” (www.rd.com).

Shopping and buying have become an addiction, to consume increasingly of what is not needed. Consumers are compelled to shop and purchase items that are, for a brief time, marketed at a discounted rate.