Compulsive Shopping
Imagine a scene in a department store where there are many different varieties of apparel, shoes, handbags, and jewelry and other accessories on sale, waiting for the crowd of women to grab them all frantically to the cashier and recklessly sliding their credit cards. In contrast, the section for men’s clothing sales are completely untouched – folded shirts are neatly arranged on top of the other, uncluttered belts are hung tidily on the other corner, and dirtless shoes are arrayed on the front display.
From the example, we can see that in general, women have a lot more to shop than men when it comes to shopping for clothing and accessories. This is why women usually spend a huge sum of money, most of the times impulsively. In order to avoid this problem, I am going to introduce the various ways we can control ourselves when shopping. Having done my research, I learned some effective ways that include involving selection in our shopping sprees and using the benefit of modern technology in providing the Internet to browse various merchants’ web sites for bargains. We should also try to write down the items we need before we go on our shopping sprees to make ourselves focus on finding the things we listed instead of putting the items we want hastily into the cart and end up regretting it.
In “Attention Internet Shoppers: The Web’s Best Product-Comparison Sites”, Jack M. Germain lists websites that offer shoppers the tools to find items with the best prices. These websites are separated in different categories. The first one is called the “Best of the Breed”, which includes comparison-shopping websites that provide consumers with numerous products, with some of them serving easy navigation, and updates about certain products for the consumers. The second is the “General-Purpose Comparisons”. These websites highlight the products people usually find during their mainstream shopping sprees. Germain also said that these websites, like the ones categorized under the “Best of the Breed”, also allow shoppers to compare the prices of particular products and also customer feedback. The last one is the “Industry-Specific Sites”, which consists of “specialty products” that requires the consumers to collect different information for the best deals. Germain also mentions that Delly Tamer, the CEO and founder of LetsTalk.com, said that “the vast majority of visitors use this site for research.” With online shopping available, consumers now can save a huge sum of money, not only because it largely involves selection, but also because they don’t have to consider the travel expenses to reach the stores.
However, making comparison-shopping online does not guarantee a woman’s addiction to shopping. According to James Maguire in his article on “Men, Women, and shopping online”, women tend to extend their shopping sprees from focusing on buying one item to ending up purchasing more products, without abandoning their goal of buying the first item they thought of. In contrast, men have an opposite behavior when it comes to shopping. Men only focus on their goal and they do intense research in comparing prices for the best deals. Knowing that men and women have distinct behaviors in shopping online, stores online have to design their pages that represent a mix of lifestyle and product focus. Maguire also said, "What we found is that women are enticed by lifestyle, then product; men are enticed by product, then lifestyle."
A “litmus test” was taken to examine whether some web sites were able to attract both men and women or not. This test tells us that in order to appeal to all consumers, these web sites have to focus on their level of friendliness and have a story that combines all individual products into one. For the convenience of shoppers from both genders with distinct shopping behaviors, web sites have to provide shopping carts online that also serve as permanent storage for items they thought of buying. It helps them to compare prices and to reconsider buying the items when they come back later. Thus, this will lead consumers to think about other factors such as wants and needs.
In CIGNA Behavioral Health’s “Overcoming Shopaholism”, the author recommended shopaholics to write down a list of wanted and needed items to differentiate between them so that they can control themselves from shopping impulsively. While trying to control their temptations, especially after spending a huge sum of money, shoppers can also rely on a trusted person to hold his or her credit card temporarily until he or she is ready to use it again. In the future, the author suggests that these shoppers should develop a habit of keeping records of transactions made to keep track of expenditures. This is to prevent themselves from repeating the same mistake again, that is, to spend money carelessly. While some of us are able to use these methods by ourselves effectively, the writer also says that there are agencies that can help shopaholics to manage their expenditures.
There are many ways to practice shopping sensibly, especially after understanding the three types of online comparison-shopping sites and the differences of men and women in shopping. Germain’s and Maguire’s articles are very much similar in a way that both relates to online shopping, which, according to Maguire’s article, is a better way to shop using selection. Since the main problem in shopping for women is controlling expenditures, the articles by CIGNA Behavioral Health helps in giving a lot of information to tackle the problem. As mentioned in Maguire’s article, women tend to “expand their mission”, and therefore they often buy more things as opposed to men. A woman can learn to list down her wants and needs to guide her when she is shopping. This will help her in overcoming her temptations and developing a habit of spending money responsibly in the future. Just like what the writer says, “Writing down your own wants and needs before you go shopping can help you control your credit card purchases.”
Stacia,
One reason this paper is effective is that you’ve done an excellent job setting up the topic (in the introduction) and tying together the main points the authors made (in the conclusion). These are things you did based on information that other people (the authors) provided. It’s not always easy to bring things together as naturally as you did here, but if you have that ability, it is a great plus for your writing because it means you’ll be able to link different parts of research projects, studies, and so on, and that is a major part of academic writing. So congratulations!
I should repeat from my comment above that you should go back and look at my comments about singular-plural nouns/verbs/pronouns. You seem to have some confusion about this. Let’s check your next paper and see if you are still having trouble getting singular and plural items to agree. And if you have any questions about any of my other comments, let me know. By the way, you don’t necessarily lose points for everything I comment on, but you seem to enjoy writing, so I try to point out things that I think you might benefit from knowing. Anyway, keep up the good work, and please do your best to wake up earlier!
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