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The study aims to identify the factors that influence young consumers’ compulsive buying, particularly Gen Z consumers who exhibit fandom qualities such as sharing the same interests and being willing to collaborate with others. This study investigates the direct and indirect impact of brand love and brand addiction on the relationship between social media addiction and compulsive buying.

The study collected data from 338 Gen Z fandoms. The snowball sampling approach is used to determine and collect data from the sample. To test for hypotheses, the study used the PROCESS macro with bootstrapping techniques to explore the direct and indirect relationships, as well as the moderated serial mediation model in this study.

The study found that social media addiction influences compulsive buying via the hierarchical linkages between brand love and brand addiction. Trash talking functions as a stimulant, amplifying the effect of brand addiction on compulsive buying.

The data were collected from young Thai consumers; thus, the generalizability aspect of the research is limited and needs to be tested in different countries and cultures.

This research provides several key contributions to the understanding of compulsive buying behavior among Gen Z, particularly within the context of a developing country. By integrating the stimulus-organism-response framework and psychological theories, this study offers a nuanced understanding of how social media addiction influences emotional and behavioral outcomes. Previous studies have primarily focused on these variables in isolation. The study fills this gap by demonstrating the sequential pathway through which social media addiction translates into compulsive buying behavior via brand love and brand addiction.