{"id":329399,"date":"2025-12-04T05:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T05:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/329399\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T05:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T05:23:10","slug":"why-is-shopping-for-two-stressful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/329399\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is shopping for two stressful? |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WhyHoliday season is here and it means family and friends coming over. Your grocery runs and shopping is only going to get more intense, and this is often accompanied by stress. AUC Riverside study has found why shopping for others increase the anxiety levels. This stress stems from the emotional weight of responsibility and the desire to please others, rather than decision difficulty. Knowing preferences reduces anxiety, but the challenge remains when trying to satisfy everyone. We have all been there. Standing in the grocery store, almost paralysed by indecision because you have to choose dinner for your partner. Or endlessly scrolling through options for a weekend getaway with your friends. You second-guess every choice, and the anxiety quietly takes over. Shopping can be overwhelming on an ordinary day, and when it comes to choosing for another person, the challenge only gets tougher. A new study by researchers at the UC Riverside School of Business, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, looked at the reason behind the anxiety levels<\/a> of shopping for two. It turns out what many of us have long suspected is true. <\/p>\n

Why shopping for two amplifies the stress<\/p>\n

The researchers compared consumer anxiety levels stemming from different shopping circumstances. They found that 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. These shared purchases 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. \u201cYou feel more responsible when you\u2019re 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,\u201d study co-author Margaret Campbell<\/a>, an associate dean, professor, and chair of the school\u2019s Marketing Department, explained in a statement.<\/p>\n

What the researchers found <\/p>\n

The new study looked into how certain purchases may impact their co-consumers and their relationships. The researchers explored consumer psychology. Campbell, along with Sharaya Jones, assistant professor of marketing at George Mason University and the paper\u2019s first author, tried to understand three types of decisions:Buying for oneself Buying for someone else (like a gift) Buying for shared use More than 2,000 participants were asked to rank 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\u2019s promotion party, and more complex decisions such as picking activities to do while travelling. The results were striking. They found that buying goods or services to be shared generated significantly more anxiety. The anxiety was amplified when the decision-maker did not know the other person\u2019s preferences. The researchers noted that the stress did not appear to be related to the difficulty of the decision. \u201cWhat\u2019s fascinating is that the anxiety doesn\u2019t stem from the choice being harder\u2014it\u2019s not about decision difficulty. It\u2019s about the added emotional weight of responsibility,\u201d Campbell said. Knowing what the other person likes reduced the stress and elevated the confidence. \u201cPeople felt better about the choice when they weren\u2019t guessing, except if they knew they couldn\u2019t please everyone,\u201d Campbell said.How to shop without stress The researchers also offered some strategies that consumers can adopt to avoid stress. They include:Learn as much as possible about others\u2019 preferences. If someone asks you about preferences, don\u2019t tell them \u2018Get whatever you want\u2019; be a little more thoughtful. Choose consensus-friendly options such as top-rated restaurants, best-selling snacks, or popular films. While shopping for a group, keep variety packs or multiple options so everyone has something they like. \u201cWhen you\u2019re choosing something to share\u2014like food or a movie\u2014it\u2019s not just a financial transaction. It becomes a social decision because you\u2019re trying to accommodate someone else\u2019s preferences and avoid disappointing them, as well as getting something you will enjoy,\u201d Campbell said.The holiday season is here, and if someone tells you \u2018Pick whatever\u2019, ask them to be more specific.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Holiday season is here and it means family and friends coming over. Your grocery runs and shopping is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[167332,97,259,260,167334,167331,167333,167330],"class_list":{"0":"post-329399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-consumer-psychology","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-mentalhealth","12":"tag-relationship-choices","13":"tag-shared-purchases-anxiety","14":"tag-shopping-strategies","15":"tag-shopping-stress"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}