Online retail therapy: A coping technique affecting consumer’s subjective wellbeing

• Main Author: Viaña, Ana Czarina C.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Subjects: Teleshopping—Health aspects; Teleshopping—Psychological aspects; Marketing
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6316; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_masteral/article/13358/viewcontent/Viaña_Ana_11796650_edited.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

With the COVID-19 posing economic and health threats that affected different countries including the Philippines, the stress levels of the Filipinos were heightened. Based on the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping by Lazarus and Folkman (1984), when an individual appraises stressors, stress is then perceived, and this causes an individual to undergo coping. Various studies focused on different coping strategies and techniques however only a few investigated the power of consumerism as a coping strategy or technique for perceived stress caused by pandemic stressors. This research introduces a conceptual framework that discusses the constructs of online retail therapy as a coping technique, affecting consumers’ moods and emotions, and in turn, subjective wellbeing. The purpose of this study is to help the online retail business owners ventured in different industries in engaging with consumers by creating campaigns and programs that highlight the therapeutic advantages of online shopping and implementing marketing communications based on the findings of the study. The researcher gathered data from two-hundred sixty-six respondents (n=266) who are ages 18 to 40 years old and are college and post-graduates. The relationships of positive affect (PAF) and negative affect (NAF) to ORT constructs, as discussed in the study of Kang and Johnson (2011), namely therapeutic shopping motivation (TSM), negative mood reduction (NMR), positive mood reinforcement (PMR) and therapeutic shopping outcome (TSO), were measured. In p-values of ≤ 0.05, only TSM and NMR constructs have significant effect on the NAF. The researcher finds out that ORT only has short-term effect in reduction of negative and therefore considered as a coping technique rather than a strategy. This research opens opportunities for further studies on ORT.