We don't yet know very much about the "typical" compulsive buyer. To be sure, several research studies support the popular stereotype, pinpointing a thirty-something female who experiences irresistible urges, uncontrollable needs, or mounting tension that can only be relieved by the compulsive buying of clothing, jewelry, and cosmetics, [and] who has been buying compulsively since her late teens or early twenties (Black et al. 1997, Christenson et al. 1994, Scherhorn et al. 1990). But there are serious methodological questions about these studies, which tend to rely on self-selected subjects. More likely, the spectrum of compulsive buyers is wide, reflecting a set of people who differ from one another in age and gender, in socioeconomic status, in patterns of buying, in the intensity of their compulsion, and in underlying motivation. This diversity suggests that efforts to capture the essence of the archetypal consumer are likely to be fruitless.

Thus, for every well-known name in the Who's Who of Chronic Shoppers-Princess Diana, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Imelda Marcos, and even Mary Todd Lincoln, who needed eighty four pairs of gloves before she could move into the White House-there are dozens or hundreds of unknowns. And the disorder is not restricted to women. No less a personage than George Washington was reported to have had a "consuming passion" for shopping, a habit that he tried (but failed) to support by consigning his tobacco or other cash crops to his creditors. Both he and Abraham Lincoln (even before he met Mary Todd) were "chronic debtors" (Catalano and Sonenberg 1993; Seelye l998, Wesson 1990). Male or female, rich or poor, famous or not, youthful or middle-aged-there is no convenient identifying demographic.

Until recently, most of the literature on compulsive buying adopted a simple, dichotomous classification; an individual either was or was not afflicted (DeSarbo and Edwards 1996). Now we are beginning to take a closer look. Investigators are differentiating among such patterns of behavior as compulsive daily shopping, occasional but consequential shopping "binges," compulsive collecting, image spending, bulimic spending, codependent spending, buying multiples of each item, compulsive bargain-hunting, compulsive hoarding, and ceaseless buy-return cycles. As yet, however, there is little or no empirical data about these patterns.

Somewhat more has been done to investigate the compulsive buying continuum and the psychological subtypes of buyers. Providing theoretical constructs for the empirical work that followed, Albanese (l988) proposed a consumption continuum ranging from the stable and consistent consumer to the compulsive, addictive, and irrational consumer, based on Kernberg's (l976) object relations theory of personality. And although they did not test it empirically, Valence et al. (l988) created a typology of compulsive buyers that includes the emotionally reactive consumer, the impulsive consumer, the fanatical consumer, and the compulsive consumer. The researchers differentiated these types by the particular combination of psychological forces-such as strong emotional activation, high cognitive control, and high reactivity-that inform the compulsive buying act.

Edwards, in a series of published and working papers (1993, 1994a, 1994b), has developed a measure of the severity of buying behavior. Scores on Edwards' compulsive buying scale (1993) place consumers along a continuum from the normal or noncompulsive buyer, who is assumed to shop and spend mainly out of necessity, all the way to the addicted buyer, who buys primarily to relieve anxiety and whose buying creates a dysfunctional lifestyle. Between these poles lie the recreational buyer, who occasionally uses shopping and spending to relieve stress or to celebrate, the borderline compulsive buyer, whose spending habits fall somewhere between the recreational and the compulsive, and the compulsive buyer, who buys mostly to relieve anxiety, though without yet strongly disrupting his/her life.

In the only empirical research to date that has examined heterogeneity in compulsive buying, DeSarbo and Edwards (l996) hypothesized that there may be more than one path to the behavior or more than one manifestation of it, each with distinct motivations and tendencies. They tested this hypothesis by separating the predispositional and circumstantial antecedents of compulsive buying and found two psychologically distinct clusters. For the first group, compulsive buying appears driven by feelings of low self-esteem, dependency, and anxiety. Such individuals attempt to build esteem via the (temporary) sense of worth, power, and control they achieve in shopping excessively. This cluster has a higher proclivity for compulsive buying than the second and is more likely to seek treatment or self-help. Individuals in the second cluster appear influenced more by their circumstances than by psychological motivations or basic personality traits. These subjects seem to act as they do out of simple materialism or social isolation or avoidance; they shop simply to acquire, to escape from loneliness, or to flee from stress.

Both of the DeSarbo/Edwards groups are markedly impulsive, but the relationship of impulse buying to compulsive buying remains uncertain. d'Astous (1990) argues that the two lie on a continuum, with the former, of course, closer to normal shopping. O'Guinn and Faber (1989) suggest that compulsive buying is, by definition, a chronic state, while impulse purchasing is an acute behavior. Edwards (1993, 1994a) suggests that impulse buying, which she defines as the unplanned purchase of generally inexpensive items, occurs when an external trigger, a product, stimulates the individual to make a purchase. Compulsive buying, in contrast, is motivated by an internal trigger, anxiety, from which shopping and spending is an escape.

While clearly we still have much to learn about compulsive shopping, we have begun making inroads. As the problem gains wider recognition and more focused attention, as the routes into the terrain of compulsive shopping are gradually mapped, answers to many of our questions will emerge. My hope for the present collection is that it will serve as a provisional guide, highlighting established landmarks and suggesting promising but uncharted new paths.

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