RESEARCH_FILE
Scott Rick
University of Michigan Ross School of Business
Known for:Consumer psychology of emotional spending — experimental research establishing retail therapy as a documented emotion-regulation behavior, and work on how attitudes toward money shape spending patterns
Key findings
- 2008
With Cryder and Loewenstein, Rick found that sad shoppers made significantly more unplanned purchases than neutral-mood shoppers, and that these purchases produced real short-term mood repair — establishing retail therapy as a genuine, if risky, emotion-regulation strategy with operant reinforcement history. Retail Therapy: A Strategic Effort to Improve Mood ↗