Explaining shopping behavior in a market economy country: A short-term mathematical model applied to the case of Spain

In recent decades, pathological consumption has become a growing behavioral misbehavior. Impulsive consumption is governed by two internal behavioral mechanisms that respond fundamentally to the hedonism or Pascal effect and to the emulation or Veblen effect. Today's development of technology acts as a catalyst of consumption by increasing access and availability to products, as well as the advertisement impact. This paper presents a compartmental discrete matrix mathematical model that allows short-term estimates of ordinary, impulsive, and pathological buyers in Spain in three different economic scenarios. The results show that impulsive and pathological buyers will increase in all the economic scenarios. Notable differences in the number of ordinary buyers are found for the group aged over 65 years.