Compulsive buying disorder (CBD) is characterized by an obsession with shopping and buying behavior that causes adverse consequences. It "is experienced as a recurring, compelling and irresistibleāuncontrollable urge, in acquiring goods that lack practical utility and very low cost resulting in excessive, expensive and time-consuming retail activity [that is] typically prompted by negative affectivity" and results in "gross social, personal and/or financial difficulties". Most people with CBD meet the criteria for a personality disorder. Compulsive buying can also be found among people with Parkinson's disease or frontotemporal dementia.
Compulsive buying-shopping disorder is classified by the ICD-11 among "other specified impulse control disorders". Several authors have considered compulsive shopping rather as a variety of dependence disorder. The DSM-5 did not include compulsive buying disorder in its chapter concerning substance-related and addictive disorders, since there is "still debate on whether other less recognized forms of impulsive behaviors, such as compulsive buying [...] can be conceptualized as addictions."
