ABSTRACT
To buy or not to buy? This behavioral question, while lacking the momentous, life-or-death quality of the Shakespearean original, is nonetheless apparently becoming a vexing one for many American consumers. On the one hand, consumers are exposed to hundreds of advertisements every day, and the result, some believe, is a new focus on shopping as a recreational activity that, in the extreme, has led to the emergence of shopping junkies (O’Guinn and Faber, 1989) and a new subject for bumper-sticker humor (e.g., “Shop ’til you drop,” “I shop therefore I am,” “Gone shopping,” and “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping”). On the other hand, these same consumers are besieged by requests from organizations representing almost every imaginable point on the political spectrum asking that they refrain from buying certain products or services in order to help the organizations further their goals. Although precise numbers are not known, Todd Putnam, founding editor of National Boycott Newsletter, has claimed that boycotts have increased markedly in number from the 1960s and 1970s, with more than 100 national efforts under way in the early 1990s as well as scores of local activities (Putnam, 1993).
