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Vicious cycle

Despite Walmart’s rededication last year to its everyday-low-price philosophy and recent ads focusing on its “ad-match guarantee” against more promotional competitors, Morgan Stanley last month reported that 60% of Walmart shoppers don’t believe the retailer actually has the lowest prices anymore. Another survey released earlier this month by WSL Strategic Retail found an even broader 86% of shoppers no longer believe Walmart has the lowest prices – though that was fielded in April, just as Walmart’s latest EDLP-focused ads began.

- How Walmart’s Vaunted 'Loop' Turned Into a Vicious Circle, AdAge.com, August 22, 2011.

2. Sad shoppers are getting sadder.

Findings from a new study show when we're feeling blue and socially isolated, we shop. Shopping, meanwhile, makes us even more depressed and alone. To fix it, we shop — and the vicious cycle continues.

But there’s hope. It turns out there are three types of materialists in this world — and for one of them, shopping is a “virtuous” cycle that actually decreases loneliness over time.

For the study, a sample of more than 2,500 consumers over six years were asked how much they agreed with statements, such as: “It sometimes bothers me quite a bit that I can’t afford to buy all the things I like,” and “I enjoy buying things that are not practical.” Study author Rik Pieters, a marketing professor at the Tilburg University in the Netherlands, then placed the shoppers in different materialist buckets and tested them for loneliness.