Retail Therapy: A Qualitative Investigation of Therapeutic Role of Shopping in Negative Affect

Abstract

This paper focuses on producing a holistic understanding of Retail Therapy and systematically reviewing the existing literature in the field of retail therapy and negative affect. Previously, there was a dearth of direct investigation on retail therapy. This paper synthesizes the different sources of knowledge on retail therapy published between 1988 to 2022 and provides an integrative and comprehensive understanding of the therapeutic role of shopping in emotional regulation. The study used only secondary data collected from different scientific journals, books, and, websites. The finding of the paper is consistent with previous studies on retail therapy that, shopping is therapeutic but not always. It has a healing power but also can make a person addicted to compulsive buying.