Shopping for two is stressful

For many of us, any kind of shopping is stressful enough. The anxiety, however, really kicks in when you must purchase something you’re going to share with another person.

Such are the findings of a UC Riverside School of Business study published in the Journal of Marketing Research that compared consumer anxiety levels stemming from different shopping circumstances.

Shopping for goods or services that you will share is significantly more stressful than shopping for yourself or for something to be given to another person, explained study co-author Margaret Campbell, an associate dean, professor, and chair of the school’s Marketing Department.

Purchases for sharing may include selecting an Airbnb or a hotel for a family getaway, the restaurant for a romantic date, the snacks for a book club meeting, or even the kind of beer to be consumed with friends during the big game.

“You feel more responsible when you’re making these sorts of decisions and you feel less confident about your ability to do a good job with it, so you worry about getting it wrong when there is a strong desire to make both of you happy,” said Campbell, an expert on consumer psychology who holds the Anderson Presidential Chair in Business at UCR.

The research, titled “The Decision-Making Process and Impact of Individual Decisions for Joint Consumption,” broke new ground in the field of consumer psychology.

Most previous studies on purchase decision-making have been done through an economic lens of self-interest, such as a desire to get the best quality for the best price, with a focus on choosing for oneself. Campbell’s research went a different direction by probing consumer concerns about how certain purchases may impact their co-consumers and their relationships.

Campbell teamed up with her former graduate student, Sharaya Jones,  an assistant professor of marketing at George Mason University in Virginia, and first author of the study. They probed three kinds of purchasing decisions: those made solely for oneself, those made for others (e.g., gifts), and those for shared use.

The study involved more than 2,000 participants who ranked their levels of anxiety after they considered various purchasing scenarios or made choices for solo or joint consumption. Among other situations, the participants had to choose healthy drinks for meetings, snacks for movies, wine for a friend’s promotion party, and more complex decisions, such as picking activities to do while traveling.

The results showed that purchasing goods or services to be shared generates significantly more anxiety—especially when the decision-maker doesn’t know the other person’s preferences or expects them to be different than their own. The increased stress did not appear to be related to the difficulty of the decision.

“What’s fascinating is that the anxiety doesn’t stem from the choice being harder—it’s not about decision difficulty,” Campbell said. “It’s about the added emotional weight of responsibility.”

But knowing more about others’ preferences reduced the stress and increased confidence, the results showed—except when a consumer learned that those they would share with had different preferences from their own.

“People felt better about the choice when they weren’t guessing,” Campbell said, “except if they knew they couldn’t please everyone.”

The study offers strategies on how consumers can cope. One way is to learn as much as possible about others’ preferences.

Also, if the person doing the shopping asks about your preference, it is best to give the shopper a thoughtful answer. Answers like “Get whatever you want” or “I don’t care” just add to the shopper’s anxiety and may even damage the relationship between the two people because such answers fail to ease the shopper’s burden, Campbell said.

Shoppers in a bind, however, can alleviate their fear of making a faux pas by choosing popular or consensus options or by choosing multiple options from which others can pick. If you’re unsure what your friend will enjoy, you may opt for the top-rated film or a top-reviewed restaurant on Yelp.
By understanding this, marketers can also ease the anxiety.

When promoting products likely to be used jointly, like party snacks, streaming services, or group outings, marketers can highlight popularity or consensus to reassure shoppers. Retailers can promote what the researchers call “assortment packages,” such as six kinds of crackers for a dip packaged in the same box. For the football fan responsible for making that halftime beer run, the 12-pack offering two each of six different varieties feels like a safer bet.

Ultimately, the research reframes a significant aspect of consumer decision-making as not just an economic act but a social one. And understanding the psychological dynamics of shared consumption, Campbell said, helps explain not just what we buy, but what it says about our relationships.

“When you’re choosing something to share—like food or a movie—it’s not just a financial transaction,” Campbell said. “It becomes a social decision because you’re trying to accommodate someone else’s preferences and avoid disappointing them as well as getting something you will enjoy as well.”