By Michael Hill
Correspondent
“Kids, work, it’s a little bit of everything,” said Ingrid Fontes.
That’s what Fontes stresses about.
How does she handle it?
“Yeah, I shop quite a bit,” she said.
But what Fontes buys and why were the subjects of Rutgers Business School’s Kristina Durante’s study — in conjunction with the University of Miami — recently published in the Journal of Marketing Research.
Durante said, “I noticed that sometimes when I myself was feeling stressed I would sometimes want to eat a tub of ice cream or go out and do retail therapy and spend my money. Other times when I was stressed I noticed that I couldn’t eat, I didn’t have an appetite and I just wanted to be isolated and conserve resources.”
That’s what piqued Durante’s interest. The researchers spent two years testing the behavior of 700 participants.
“So, what we did was we had people engage in the most stress-inducing event in life next to death, which is giving a speech in front of a room full of people,” she explained.
Then the researchers tested the participants to see how they would spend or save their money under acute stress.
“So generally, stress does lead to saving money,” said Durante.
The professor says what we buy when we’re feeling that kind of stress depends on one word: control.
“Whether or not people saved their money and spent on necessities or did more of the retail therapy where I’m just going to spend to feel good hinged on their perceived level of control over the stressful event,” Durante said.
Fontes seems to prove the theory.
Does she feel she has control of that stress or is it something she feels she doesn’t have control of?
“No, I know where the line is cut so I just do a little shopping and then I feel all better,” Fontes answered.
So what does she buy?
“It depends. Makeup. You know, a little shirt, a pair of pants, always a little something different. Something for the kids,” she said.
And what does that do for her stress?
“I get over it,” she laughed.
The professor says predictability is the big issue.
“So when things are unpredictable we don’t know what the next day or the next hour or the next minute may bring so we have to go into deep survival mode,” said Durante.
Durante says life throws us many reasons to stress — traffic, weather, the recent presidential election and more. She says the research proves it causes us to conserve and it’s information important to marketers and consumers.