Most of the consumer behavior studies help to improve firms marketing strategies and increase the effectiveness of consumers themselves by understanding of how consumers think, feel, and reason to select. Despite the positive effect of consumer behavior on a firm, our worst enemies are ourselves. Our desires, choices and actions often have negative impact for businesses and for society as a whole. This is what we so called, ‘dark side of consumer behavior’. According to Solomon (2017), the dimensions of the ‘dark side’ of consumer behaviors include deviant consumer behavior, consumer terrorism, addictive consumption, consumed consumer and illegal acquisition and product use. In this article, it will concentrate on the dark side of consumer behavior – addictive consumption.
Additive consumption refers to a physiological and/or psychological dependency on products or services (Solomon 2017). These addictive behaviors include alcoholism, drug addiction, cigarettes and social media addiction. Indeed, numerous companies gain profit from the addictive products.
In Korea, up to 30 percent of the youngsters are addicted to the internet and social media due to the cheap high-speed internet (Solomon 2017). Thus, internet shopping has become their essential routine life. And this has given the market opportunity for the big firms to gain profits from its cyber product in cyberspace. One of the famous cyber product is ‘avatar’. Avatars are a unique cyber product that refer to picture, drawings, or icons that users choose to represent themselves in cyberspace (Lee & Shin 2004). Consumers are able to create their own avatar by adding props to decorate their cyber selves, and each prop cost from $0.5. However, due to the very nature of avatars, consumer psychology, and the way that they are marketed to teenage consumers, avatars may also pose considerable threat to unsuspecting teenagers and the general pubic. Addictive avatar consumption is thought to be a behavior that might reduce stress. However, applied to consumer behavior of avatars, the implication is that consumers who are emotionally upset or stressed may be more likely to put prudent self-control aside in the hope that purchasing goods or services will make them feel better. An 11 years old committed suicide after getting scolding from her mother for spending 1,700,000 won (2114 AUD) over a period of 6 months on avatar items (Lee & Shin 2004). Despite of the cost, consumer still purchase props over and over again since the behavior might reduce stress.
What do you think of addicted consumption? Do you know anyone who that have addicted consumption?
Referent
Solomon, M. R. 2017, Consumer behavior : buying, having, and being / Mike R. Solomon, Saint Joseph’s University.
Lee, O. and Shin, M. ,2004, ‘Addictive Consumption of Avatars in Cyberspace’, CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(4), pp. 417–420.
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