The timing of this book is very important, having been released on the heels of the global pandemic and lockdown where much of normal social behavior and economic activities came to a pause and potential reset. Many people have had time to reconsider many what they value most and how they should interact with the material world. This book touches on all the important components of the psychosocial and economic underpinnings of compulsive buying behavior and offers an insightful and important analysis of ethical considerations in marketing to compulsive buyers. These ethical guidelines will offer invaluable insight to persons who have responsibility for the regulation or subsidization of marketing. This text also has significant implications and application to the marketing of ideas, especially those intended to impact prosocial behaviors that aim to enhance the common good. This book will make a significant difference in helping people to rethink ways of shaping and changing a variety of behaviors, not just buying behaviors.

Leahcim Semaj, Above or Beyond, psychologist and management consultant

Life has turned upside down for so many people during this COVID period, and we are seeing the emergence of many adaptive and maladaptive strategies that people are using to cope, creating the perfect storm for problems in consumer spending to emerge. Trevor A. Smith and Kenroy C. Wedderburn took a very serious topic and presented it in such a way that it was hard to stop reading. I loved this book as a professional, an academic, and as someone who just loves reading. This book will be useful for students in psychology and marketing.

Rose Johnson, University of the West Indies, Mona

Since Thorstein Veblen's groundbreaking book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1918)—which coined the expression "conspicuous consumption"—researchers have studied consumer's shopping habits. Beyond the goal of satisfying basic needs, Why do consumers buy? For enjoyment, status, indulgence, social interaction, self-affirmation? And what makes some people become compulsive buyers—shopaholics, unable to say "no"? Looking back over the literature on the subject and their own personal conversations with friends and colleagues, coauthors Smith and Wedderburn develop and put forth a consumer traits model of the compulsive buyer based on demographics and psychographics. This work ultimately attempts to suggest a set of business ethics about marketing to compulsive shoppers and some policy ideas informed by these ethical considerations. Recommended for graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

Choice Reviews