Why We Spend More With Friends
What experiments say about shopping with friends, why the effect differs by shopper and by companion, and what a shared trip does to the person deciding.
Answer to the question
Do you spend more when shopping with friends?
Sometimes, and it depends on the shopper. In four studies reported in 2011, shopping with a friend raised spending for agency-oriented consumers, with a weaker boost for communion-oriented ones, and friends mattered most for high self-monitors. Other experiments found peers raised the urge to buy on impulse while family members lowered it.
Key takeaways
- Didem Kurt, J. Jeffrey Inman and Jennifer Argo reported four studies in 2011 in which shopping with a friend raised spending for agency-oriented consumers and by less for communion-oriented ones.
- In the same studies, friends mattered most for high self-monitors, and the effect reversed when spending on oneself was replaced by donating to charity.
- Xueming Luo's two experiments in 2005 found that being with peers raised the urge to buy on impulse while being with family members lowered it.
- T. J. L. van Rompay and colleagues found in 2012 that shoppers with a strong need for affiliation spent more in dense stores, a result the authors link to impression management.
- Sarah Rose Cavanagh's Hivemind describes a collective mode in which close others are absorbed into the self, which offers one way to read why a friend changes the shopper.
Send the same shopper to the same store twice, once alone and once with a friend, and the second basket can be larger. Whether it is depends on the shopper. Didem Kurt, J. Jeffrey Inman and Jennifer Argo tested how an accompanying friend changes what people spend, and the biggest rise came among people who watch how they come across. Shopping with friends is a social setting before it is a buying one, and the research treats it that way.
Alone, a purchase answers only to the person buying it
A solo trip is a private decision. The item, the price and the budget are the only parties to it, and nobody else sees what goes into the basket. Most simple pictures of buying are drawn from that scene, which is why shopping with friends tends to appear in them as an afterthought, if at all.
With a friend beside the shopper the picture changes, and it changes by type. In the four studies Kurt, Inman and Argo reported in 2011, shopping with friends raised spending for agency-oriented consumers, and the boost was weaker for communion-oriented ones. Agency is a focus on personal goals and standing, and communion a focus on relationships and harmony. The paper gives male shoppers as its example of the first and female shoppers as its example of the second.
A shopper focused on standing may have a use for a companion, who is a witness to the choice. A shopper focused on harmony may treat the same companion as someone to coordinate with, and coordination need not push the total up in the same way. The paper reports the split itself: one kind of trip, two different effects on spending, sorted by orientation.
With a friend beside them, the basket has an audience
Shopping with friends puts an audience in the aisle, and a second trait measures how much an audience matters to a person. Self-monitoring, a term from Mark Snyder's work, is how closely a person reads a social situation and adjusts behaviour to suit it. High self-monitors take their cues from the room, and low self-monitors act on what they themselves feel. In the 2011 studies, friends mattered most for high self-monitors, and the effects ran in opposite directions for agentic and communal consumers. That fits an impression account, in which a person tuned to the room spends in a way that suits the company.
A separate pair of studies on store crowding points the same way. T. J. L. van Rompay and colleagues, publishing in 2012, varied retail density and measured each shopper's need for affiliation, the wish to be with others and liked by them. Shoppers with a strong need for affiliation did not have a worse time in dense stores, and they spent more there. The authors link this to impression management, the effort to shape how others see us. No friend was involved: the audience was strangers, and spending still rose.
People also read their own purchases as evidence about who they are, as Do Purchases Work as Self-Signalling sets out, so the impression being managed may be partly for the shopper's own benefit. Alone, that reading happens in private. With a friend or a crowd beside the shopper, it happens in company.
One of Kurt, Inman and Argo's tests gives the strongest sign that the effect is social and not a general taste for buying. When the context moved from spending on oneself to donating to charity, the interaction between friend and orientation reversed. The same two kinds of consumer, in company, pulled in the opposite direction once the money was going to a cause. That reversal is the best evidence that a companion works through the social setting and what each person wants it to say, and not through a simple appetite that a companion switches on.
Peers raise the urge to buy and family lowers it
Shopping with friends is only the first split, because who comes along matters as well as whether anyone does. Xueming Luo ran two experiments in 2005 that sorted companions by relationship. Being with peers raised participants' urge to make an impulsive purchase, while being with family members lowered it. The difference between the two grew when the group was tightly bonded and when the participant was more prone to social influence. Luo points out that most earlier work explained impulse buying through individual traits, and these experiments add the social setting to the account.
How Many Friends You Can Actually Keep looks at how many close ties a person can sustain, a reminder that the tightly bonded group in Luo's work is a narrower circle than everyone who gets called a friend. Group Decisions at the Checkout covers a different case, several people settling one purchase together, whereas in these studies each person buys for themselves with the others looking on.
Three details separate one trip of shopping with friends from another in these studies:
- Who comes along: a peer, a family member or a stranger in the same store.
- How close the group is: tight bonds widened the gap between peers and family.
- The shopper's own tendencies: agency or communion, high or low self-monitoring, more or less prone to influence.
Sarah Rose Cavanagh's Hivemind adds a way to read all three. She argues that people have an individual mode and a collective mode, and that in the collective mode they synchronise with those around them. She also describes how close others are absorbed into a person's sense of self. Read against Luo's work and the 2011 studies, that suggests a buyer in company is a partly different decision-maker from the same buyer alone, one whose choices are made with a companion's view built in.
Common questions
Do you spend more when shopping with friends?
Sometimes, and it depends on the shopper. In four studies reported in 2011, shopping with friends raised spending for agency-oriented consumers, with a weaker boost for communion-oriented ones, and friends mattered most for high self-monitors.
Is the effect about showing off?
The research points to impression management for some shoppers. Van Rompay and colleagues found that shoppers with a strong need for affiliation spent more in dense stores, a result the authors link to impression management.
Does a friend always raise spending?
No. In the 2011 studies the rise was found for agency-oriented consumers and was weaker for communion-oriented ones, so the same friend produced different effects for different shoppers.
Does it matter who comes along?
Yes. In Luo's two experiments, being with peers raised participants' urge to make an impulsive purchase and being with family members lowered it. The gap was larger for tightly bonded groups and for participants who were more prone to social influence.
Sources
Cavanagh, S. R. Hivemind. Seed book; vault hub Books/Hivemind.
Kurt, D., Inman, J. J., & Argo, J. J. (2011). The Influence of Friends on Consumer Spending: The Role of Agency-Communion Orientation and Self-Monitoring. Journal of Marketing Research, 48(4), 741-754. doi:10.1509/jmkr.48.4.741 https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.48.4.741
Luo, X. (2005). How Does Shopping With Others Influence Impulsive Purchasing? Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15(4), 288-294. doi:10.1207/s15327663jcp1504_3 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327663jcp1504_3
van Rompay, T. J. L., Krooshoop, J., Verhoeven, J. W. M., & Pruyn, A. T. H. (2012). With or without you: Interactive effects of retail density and need for affiliation on shopping pleasure and spending. Journal of Business Research, 65(8), 1126-1131. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.08.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.08.005