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By Lewis Braham - 2012-10-01T18:04:47Z
Mary DeRosier had a choice. This summer, during one of the worst heat waves in Chicagos history, the 60-year-old music teacher had to decide whether to go on vacation to someplace cooler or stay at home and buy antiques from home shopping website One Kings Lane. She chose the latter. I didnt want to go on a trip because I didnt want to get bed bugs and I didnt want to get yelled at by some flight attendant, she says. I decided Im going to spend my vacation money on shopping instead. And Im telling you I had plenty of fun.
DeRosier jokingly calls checking the site every day for deals my biggest problem and my biggest joy and part of my midlife crisis. Shes not alone. Some 15 million Americans suffer from shopping addiction, according to the American Psychological Association. Research suggests the Internet is a really fertile ground for the development and maintenance of compulsive buying disorder, says Dr. April Benson, a psychologist in New York and author of To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop. The ease, the 24-7-ness of it, the anonymity and the vast array of productsall of those factor into the disorder.
Flash sale sites such as One Kings Lane, Gilt, ideeli, Haute Look and Rue La La make the shopping experience all the more enticing. Part of their addictive quality lies in the flash aspect of sales that last often only 24 to 72 hours. Ive had clients whove found flash sale sites almost like crack cocaine, says Terrence Shulman, founder of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending & Hoarding in Franklin, Michigan. Many clients are overshopping at traditional sites, but what makes these flash sale ones unique is they offer high-end or rare items that go quickly. So they intensify the adrenaline, and the hunt and the feeling of euphoria when people are able to snap up a deal. Its almost like gambling, in a way.
Although neither Benson nor Shulman will disclose the names of clients, Benson says she has ones who have been as much as $100,000 in debt because of flash sale sites. Something about the scarcity and the need to do it right now really interferes with peoples judgment, says Benson.
Another draw is the exclusivity of the sites, as one has to sign up to be a member to receive information about the deals. DeRosier says that isn't the reason for her interest in One Kings Lane, but later she said she was jealous that a designer friend started selling her goods on the site. I felt like shed stolen my secret, DeRosier says. I was disappointed because I was pretending the site was private.
'Aspirational shopping'
One Kings Lane has north of 5 million members, but the fact that DeRosier feels special using it is no accident. Chief Executive Doug Mack cites aspirational shopping, in which a person gets access to a class of goods and people they would normally never associate with, as the key to the sites allure. Thats probably more to the core of One Kings Lane than any other new commerce site on the Web, says Mack. For example, Michael Smith is a famous interior designer for the Obamas. He runs sales of products from his private warehouse on One Kings Lane. Another one of our designers -- Martyn Lawrence Bullard -- also has done work for Elton John and Cher. Entry to this world you could never crack from a money or access perspective is a huge part of our appeal.
It is precisely such fantasies of an affluent celebrity lifestyle that compel most shopaholics. One of the real drivers of compulsive buying disorder is when there is a big discrepancy in who someone feels themselves to be and who they would like to be and how they would like to be seen, says Benson. So buying luxurious goods and belonging to an in website is an attempt to make up for some of what we psychologists call the self-discrepancy gap.
Divorced, DeRosier lives alone with her two pit-bull mixes in a condo crowded with so many purchases she says the neighbors have started to comment. Although she wont disclose how much she has spent, during the summer she purchased numerous lamps, vases, paintings of dogs -- including her favorite of a five-legged one she deems outsider art -- and a 9-foot-tall bookcase by interior designer Alessandra Branca that was so big it had to be disassembled to get in her door.
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Anatomy of an Online Flash Sale Addict
