Business
Shopping addiction should be taken more seriously say sufferers
BBCA day of retail therapy can be just the ticket for some people to help them feel better about themselves. But what happens when you can’t stop shopping?
Surrounded by racks of shirts, dresses and jumpers, Lucy tells me that she could spend up to 14 hours a day searching out new clothes as an escape from reality.
The 37-year-old’s life may sound like a dream, but Lucy is clear that excessive shopping damaged her life.
At one point, Lucy found herself not paying her bills so she could continue to buy clothes.
“It’s like a physical and an emotional drowning. I have felt like I’m just under a weight of clothes constantly,” she says.
Lucy has no idea how many garments she owns, but they take up an entire room in her West Yorkshire home as well as several suitcases – and a 35 sq ft storage unit.
“Clothes acted like an armour to not feel the feelings that I did in real life,” she explains.
Lucy set up a fashion Instagram account and her shopping eventually “spiralled” to the point that she was spending £700 per week – eventually racking up £12,000 of debt.
“It was the first thing I would think about when I woke up.
“You keep looking for clothes in the same way someone might keep drinking because they haven’t quite reached the point of escapism they were hoping to reach,” she recalls as she continues to recover.
‘Penny drop moment’
She says seeing influencers online with copious amount of clothes “normalised” her habits.
It was not until a therapist told her she may have oniomania – the compulsive urge to buy things – that she realised it was possible to be addicted to shopping.
She describes the second in her NHS Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) session that she heard about the disorder as a “penny drop” moment.
Shopping addiction, also known as compulsive buying disorder or oniomania, is when a person feels an uncontrollable need to shop and spend, despite the negative consequences.
It is not known how many people have it. A review of research suggests it affects around 5% of adults but a more recent study says it may have risen to 10% since the pandemic.
Now Lucy and others across the UK are calling for a better understanding of the condition and for more support from the NHS.
“I think the resources are currently lacking. The research and understanding of oniomania is just not there in the same way as addiction to substances,” Lucy says.
Natalie has what she calls her “cupboard of doom” with more than 10,000 household items in her Rotherham home.
For the 40-year-old, her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) “triggers” her to buy certain things – including a particular number of items and colours.
The cupboard is home to 300 tubes of toothpaste and 3,000 washing pods.
“It just escalated to the point where I was going out and just wasn’t settled until my boot was full of stuff,” Natalie says.
At the peak of her addiction, she would be at the shops every day and could spend up to £3,000 a month – including £1,000 on toiletries.
“I cannot stop – and I do not want to stop either. If I see something online, I need it. I don’t care how I get it, I need to get it.”
The mother-of-one recently spent £1,000 while on a flight – mainly on perfumes – and says she has about 400 fragrances, bought in little more than two years.
Natalie, who works in private nursing, says ads have a “massive effect” on her buying habits and she can spend around six hours a day watching perfume videos online when she is not working.
She has undergone therapy both within the NHS and privately, but feels it was not successful as she is not yet ready to stop – but is focused on trying to cut her shopping.
“I think every addiction should be treated the same and more help and therapy should be available [from the NHS] to people who want it,” she adds.
HANDOUTThe BBC has spoken to 15 people who feel they have a shopping addiction.
Many talked of a mental toll and feelings of guilt and shame. One said they developed an eating disorder as a result, and another said it became a “monster” in their life.
All felt that social media contributed to their addiction.
According to experts, the proportion of retail sales online has more than doubled in the last decade, up from 12% in May 2015 to 27% in May 2025.
Digital advertising body IAB UK says advertisers’ spend on social media content grew by 20% last year – standing at a total of £8.87bn.
Zaheen Ahmed, director of therapy at The UKAT Group, which runs addiction treatment centres across the country, says they have seen more people with a shopping addiction.
He explains that the hormonal anticipation of a purchase could be equated to the reaction of a drug user securing a hit.
Mr Ahmed says that social media use as part of smartphone ownership is “the new normal”.
“Social media is impacting our lives big time and it is contributing to our urge to buy, urge to spend, urge to interact every time.”
HANDOUTShopping became a coping mechanism for issues surrounding Alyce’s self-confidence and esteem.
She started using Buy Now Pay Later schemes when she was aged 18 – a decision she describes as a “gateway” to other credit.
In the end, Alyce, from Bristol, was saddled with debts of £9,000 after spending up to £800 each month on new items, particularly ordering clothes online.
“The more I had to open, the more excitement there was.
“But once I opened the parcels, the buzz would wear off and I’d be sad again – so then the cycle continues.
“Social media is essentially another version of QVC, but one younger generations can watch,” the 25-year-old says.
Alyce, who works in business administration, has since overcome her addiction with therapy and is now almost debt free.
“If I hadn’t done that, I don’t really know where I would be,” she says.
“It does genuinely change your way of thinking and creeps into everything you do – your whole life revolves around payday when you can shop again.
“It just becomes so overwhelming.”
- If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story you can visit the BBC Action Line for more support.
The NHS says it is possible to become addicted to just about anything – but there’s no distinct diagnosis for a shopping addiction.
One reason is because experts dispute how to classify it, with some believing it is a behavioural addiction, while others link it to mood or obsessive compulsive disorders.
Professor of addiction at the University of York Ian Hamilton says shopping addiction has “caught psychiatry on the back foot”.
The expert, who has worked in the field for three decades, said he believes we are still two or three years from the disorder being more widely recognised as a formal diagnosis.
Prof Hamilton says the retail sector has lifted some of the strategies used by the gambling industry to keep people engaged online.
“I don’t think it’s any accident that people find it difficult once they start this loop of spending, buying, feeling good then having remorse.”
The academic adds the rise of influencers is not just a coincidence.
“It’s one thing having an item described to you, [but that] doesn’t have the same impact as seeing a glossy well-put together video package which extols the virtue of an item and only shows the positives.”
Pamela Roberts, psychotherapist at the healthcare provider Priory Group, is clear: “We need to learn different coping strategies but we can only learn [them] when it’s recognised as a problem – and that’s only done when it’s made official,” she adds.
An NHS spokesperson said: “NHS Talking Therapies provides treatment for a range of conditions including OCD and provides practical skills and techniques to help cope.”
They added that anyone struggling with obsessive and compulsive behaviour can contact their GP or refer themselves for therapy.
OpenAI has hired Mike Liberatore, the former chief financial officer at Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, CNBC reported on September 16.
Liberatore’s LinkedIn profile lists his current role as the business finance officer at OpenAI. His tenure at xAI lasted merely four months, and previously, he worked as the vice president of finance and corporate development at Airbnb.
The report added that Liberatore will report to OpenAI’s current CFO, Sarah Friar, and will work with co-founder Greg Brockman’s team, which manages the contracts and capital behind the company’s compute strategy.
According to The Wall Street Journal’s report, Liberatore was involved with xAI’s funding efforts, including a $5 billion debt sale in June. He also oversaw xAI’s data centre expansion in Memphis, Tennessee, in the United States. The reasons for his departure remain unknown.
Liberatore is an addition to the list of recent high-profile departures from xAI. Last month, Robert Keele, who was the general counsel at the company, announced his departure, stating that there were differences between his worldviews and Musk’s.
The WSJ report also added that Raghu Rao, a senior lawyer overseeing the commercial and legal affairs for the company, left around the same time.
Furthermore, Igor Babuschkin, the co-founder of the company, also announced last month that he was leaving xAI to start his own venture capital firm.
That being said, Liberatore’s appointment at OpenAI comes at a time when the company has announced significant structural changes.
OpenAI recently announced that its nonprofit division will now be ‘paired’ with a stake in its public benefit corporation (PBC), valued at over $100 billion. The company also announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Microsoft to transform its for-profit arm into a PBC. This structural change was initially announced by OpenAI in May.
Business
Google Advisor Explains Why ESG-Led AI Is Essential For Business Resilience In The Future Of Work
This article is based on the Future of Work Podcast episode “Why AI and ESG Must Evolve Together to Protect the Future of Work” with Kate O’Neill. Click here to listen to the entire episode.
In the rush to innovate, are today’s leaders forgetting why they started?
Businesses chasing AI without aligning to human-centered metrics risk building beautiful systems that fail spectacularly.
In a recent episode of The Future of Work® Podcast, Kate O’Neill, CEO of KO Insights and a seasoned digital transformation strategist, delivered a critical message to today’s business leaders: you must stop chasing metrics in isolation and start thinking in terms of ecosystems.
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As AI becomes an increasingly central part of how organizations operate, leaders face a choice: retrofit outdated success models to new technologies, or reimagine the system altogether through the lens of purpose, resilience, and human flourishing.
With a career advising clients as varied as Google, McDonald’s, and the United Nations, O’Neill isn’t a futurist just making vague predictions. She’s a strategist with a clear framework and a call to action to solve AI integration problems: align artificial intelligence initiatives with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles — not in name only, but in measurable, mission-driven ways that track real-world outcomes.
“I think ESG as a concept is valid. It’s not the principles that are wrong. It’s that we’ve been measuring the wrong things,” she said during the podcast conversation.
This insight forms the cornerstone of O’Neill’s approach. In a world captivated by AI’s predictive capabilities and automation potential, organizations often overlook the encompassing impact of their decisions.
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Are these technologies improving lives? Are they regenerating ecosystems — social or environmental — rather than extracting from them? Too often, she explains, companies confuse compliance with progress, chasing ESG as a branding exercise instead of a structural transformation.
This critique is not about abandoning ESG or digital transformation. Quite the opposite. It’s about evolving both.
From Checklists to Systems Thinking
The past decade has seen ESG reporting become a staple of corporate responsibility efforts. But O’Neill points out a flaw: ESG frameworks often push businesses to focus on standardized inputs and outputs rather than actual impact.
These rubrics, while helpful for consistency, can fail to reflect the lived experience of people and communities affected by a company’s operations.
Instead, she argues for aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a framework of 17 interrelated goals with actionable metrics designed to improve life for all — not just shareholders.
To her, that’s a better approach, as most businesses are doing something that could be furthering the SDGs, but they just don’t necessarily realize it.
From water access and infrastructure to gender equality and education, the SDGs provide a nuanced, flexible way for companies to identify where their operations already intersect with meaningful societal progress.
More importantly, they allow companies to evolve those operations in a direction that’s measurable, values-aligned, and resilient.
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Making ESG Real in the Age of AI
AI technologies are tools that mirror the systems they’re built within. When integrated blindly, AI can amplify inequities and environmental damage. But when aligned with well-defined social goals, it can act as a force multiplier for good.
Consider how companies often rush to replace human labor with AI in the name of efficiency. O’Neill challenges this logic, not just from a social justice perspective but from a business strategy standpoint. In many cases, this kind of substitution overlooks deeper ESG implications — regional job displacement, lost organizational knowledge, reduced resilience in the face of uncertainty.
“Additive” use of AI, she argues, is far more effective than “replacing” strategies. Enhancing human capability, rather than removing it, yields more sustainable organizations.
This philosophy stems from a fundamental distinction O’Neill highlights: the difference between sense-making and prediction.
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Humans interpret, synthesize, and apply judgment. Machines, even the most advanced AI, rely on data and probability. One of her favorite analogies comes from healthcare: a doctor can hear the emotional nuance in a teenager’s “I’m fine” — something no large language model can reliably decode today.
In complex systems — like health, education, or public infrastructure — nuance matters.
A Fast-Changing Landscape Needs Slow, Strategic Thinking
Much of the anxiety among today’s executives comes from the pace of change. Technology is moving faster than ever, and leaders are under pressure to act quickly or risk irrelevance. But as O’Neill notes, movement alone isn’t enough. Strategic motion — guided by values and grounded in measurable, ecosystem-wide outcomes — is what will separate resilient organizations from fragile ones.
The goal is progress, not perfection, and that progress requires recognizing the trade-offs embedded in every transformation decision.
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We are already seeing early-stage consequences: water-intensive AI data centers straining local ecosystems; workers displaced without meaningful re-skilling pathways; energy use surging in areas already vulnerable to climate stress.
What Companies Can Do Now
The path forward, according to O’Neill, is rooted in clarity, alignment, and iteration. Businesses don’t need to pivot overnight or rebuild their operations from scratch. They need to take stock of what they already do well, identify the SDG most aligned with their mission, and begin tracking meaningful, relevant metrics that reflect their contribution to a better future.
This can be as simple as adding one SDG-aligned KPI to a leadership dashboard or as complex as redesigning hiring practices to retain knowledge and community ties. What matters most is the intentionality behind the action.
For leaders struggling with how to begin, O’Neill offers practical guidance: don’t wait for perfect information. Move. Learn. Adapt. Align technology strategy with purpose — not in a silo, but as part of a larger ecosystem of human and planetary thriving. Because in the future of work, success will be defined by how wisely we integrated AI into the human systems that sustain us.
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Hangzhou, China (ANTARA/PRNewswire)- AliBtrip, a designated platform specializing in business travel management under Fliggy of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988), has introduced an integrated AI business travel solution. The innovative solution features two key modules: an employee travel agent for personalized planning, and a corporate management agent to streamline financial administration and compliance through data-driven decision-making support.
AliBtrip distinguishes itself from other Travel Management Companies (TMCs) with its unique AI applications and digital transformation management, leveraging Alibaba’s extensive ecosystem. Recent data indicates that AliBtrip serves over 20,000 industry-leading clients and more than one million growth companies, with over 20 million corporate employees booking business trips through the platform.
“The foundation of business travel services lies in trust between employees and companies,” said Zhuoran Zhuang, Vice President of Alibaba Group and CEO of Fliggy. “AliBtrip’s solution aims to transform AI capabilities into tangible benefits, reducing both visible and hidden costs while enhancing value for our clients.”
Addressing the challenges of corporate travel
Unlike consumer-focused solutions, the AI implementation for business travel emphasizes efficiency and compliance at every stage. AliBtrip’s AI solution, powered by multiple intelligent agents, tackles the complexities of corporate travel through a sophisticated division of labor among agents. It integrates long and short-term memory management and real-time deployment of the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Powered by AliBtrip and Fliggy’s extensive data from the hotel and travel sectors, this AI solution draws from a real-time price database for flights, accommodations, transportation, and dining, ensuring practical and effective travel planning.
Optimizing management with intelligent analysis
For businesses, AliBtrip’s AI acts as an expert in administrative and financial management, offering real-time strategic analytics and action support. This capability significantly reduces the transactional workload related to analysis, communication, and compliance.
In addition to its pricing database, AliBtrip’s AI solution can customize exclusive datasets that reflect each corporate client’s travel standards and employee preferences, aligning with the company’s policies and values.
Features such as a strategy center and natural language interaction streamline corporate management, with intelligent cost control options presented in clear, quantitative indicators and intuitive examples for decision-makers, allowing them to make adjustments with a single click. The AI can also analyze historical travel data to identify potential issues proactively.
Enhancing employee satisfaction through streamlined booking
For employees, AliBtrip’s AI simplifies the booking process, alleviating the burden of comparing travel policies and booking transportation, accommodation, and car services separately. The employee travel agent generates comprehensive itineraries based on three key inputs: purpose, time, and destination, linking seamlessly to the travel request in the system. After verifying departure and arrival locations, it autonomously creates the itineraries that include tickets, hotels, and transportation, all while considering factors such as weather and check-in times.
Real-time travel assistance enhances the overall experience, with automatic reminders and recommendations integrated into the travel itineraries that comply with corporate standards. This significantly reduces risks associated with budget overruns or non-compliance.
The AI solution also uncovers cost-saving opportunities often-overlooked; for example, suggesting business class tickets with early departures that could avoid overnight stays or prioritizing hotels that align with employee preferences within budget constraints.
“Employees should be served, not restricted,” said Shenyang Shi, General Manager of AliBtrip, highlighting the philosophical shift underlying the innovative solution. “By leveraging advanced travel planning algorithms and combining intent recognition capabilities with comprehensive datasets and route optimization, the platform demonstrates how AI can reconcile cost management with employee satisfaction, creating value for both businesses and their traveling workforce.”
About Fliggy
Fliggy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988 (HKD Counter) and 89988 (RMB Counter), and is one of the leading online travel platforms in China. Fliggy places a strong emphasis on innovation in its products and services, catering to the increasingly personalized and diversified needs of consumers in both China and overseas markets.
Leveraging Fliggy’s advantage as part of the Alibaba ecosystem, merchants can benefit from the vast user base within the Group. Fliggy also collaborates with partners through a full-service management format, helping more merchants, especially small and medium-sized ones, easily and efficiently share opportunities enabled by digitalization.
Fliggy’s long-term strategy is to promote the digital transformation of the tourism industry, using an open platform and mechanisms to help the industry make better use of digital business infrastructure for their operations.
Source: Fliggy
Reporter: PR Wire
Editor: PR Wire
Copyright © ANTARA 2025
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