With the development of online shopping, consumers’ shopping methods can be divided into rational purchases and impulsive purchases. The Internet represents a new marketing channel that can stimulate buying impulsiveness.
Brick and Mortar stores attracted more impulsive consumers in those days but now due to the development in retailing and marketing environment, the online shopping environment involves more impulsive purchasing than the former.
Impulsive buying has been much studied in the context of Western countries, while the Asian context has largely remained oblivious. Impulsive buying behaviour is of specific interest in emerging economies, such as India. Asian consumers may engage in less impulsive purchasing than consumers in Western countries.
Defining impulsive purchasing
Impulse purchasing is a phenomenon that started to trigger consumer researchers’ interest forty years ago (Clover 1950; DuPont Studies 1945).
Impulse purchasing and recorded it as the difference between shoppers’ intended and actual purchases.
Impulse Purchasing = Unplanned Purchasing + Exposure to a Stimulus
Piron defined impulsive buying according to three aspects, namely, an unplanned purchase, emotional stimulation, and the timeliness of the behaviour, which is seen as the purchase behaviour of making decisions immediately.
Impulsive buyers are usually more emotional, they enjoy getting fun from browsing and shopping, and when they are aware of their desire to purchase something impulsively, they tend to take immediate action in a state of hyperactivity and excitement.
Unplanned purchasing is unequivocally differentiated from impulse purchasing because of the “on-the-spot” requirement: Unplanned purchases not decided immediately upon the first encounter with the stimulus cannot qualify as impulse purchases.
Factors influencing online impulsive buying
Psychological Factors
Personality traits
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism – Self-esteem, Drive, Lifestyle traits, Self-regulation
External Factors
- Store image
- Display of products
- Ambience
- POP impulsive purchase (temptation)
- Credit card payment
- Rewards for shopping
- Loyalty programs
Situational Factors
- Spending power
- Actual / perceived time available
- Shopping seasons (utilizing the festival offers)
- Shopping habits
Demographic & Socio-Cultural Factors
- Age
- Gender
- Family circumstances
- Education & Income
- Social appreciation (liking for status)
- Individualism &
- Independence
Internal Stimuli
- Irresistible urge to buy
- Emotional state
- Mood for shopping
- Positive buying emotions
- Mood management
- Sensational feelings
Hedonic Consumption
- Pleasure & Happiness
- Shopping enjoyment
- Delight, joy & fun
- Excitement & Ecstasy
- Sensation seeking
- Recreational aspects
- Pursuit of pleasure
- Symbolic & self – expressive goods
Dimensions of impulsive buying
With Mowen’s 3M model as a theoretical framework, this paper examines the trait predictors of this online buying tendency.
Positive Emotion
Positive emotion refers to “the extent to which a person feels enthusiastic, excited, and inspired”.
That is, positive emotion positively and significantly influences impulsive purchasing.
Buying impulsiveness (surface trait) is positively affected by Internet addiction (situational trait), need for arousal (elemental trait), and need for material resources (elemental trait).
Negative Emotion
Negative emotion refers to “the extent to which a person feels distressed, irritated, and disturbed”. It is also known as negative affect which is defined as the extent to which a person reflects the painful and unhappy engagement with one’s surrounding environment.
Compared with positive emotions, negative emotions drain customers’ energy, resulting in less impulsive purchasing behaviour.
However, consumers with negative emotions are more likely to make purchases because they take it as a way to make themselves happy.
It is negatively affected by task orientation (compound trait). Emotional instability (elemental trait) has a positive effect on Internet addiction. Conscientiousness (elemental trait) has a positive effect on task orientation. Theoretical and practical implications are provided.
All factors are significantly and positively related to online impulsive buying except website security, price, novelty, and negative emotion.
Convenience as a stimulus for consumers’ online impulsive buying.
Seven key dimensions of online service convenience:
- access convenience,
- search convenience,
- evaluation convenience,
- transaction convenience,
- relationship convenience,
- possession convenience, and
- post-possession convenience.
The study demonstrates that online convenience is a multidimensional construct with several dimensions. Relationship convenience is the most critical factor influencing online convenience perception. Relationship convenience (= 0.86; p = 0.001) has emerged as the most important driver of online shopping convenience and is the primary reason people purchase online.
Some common impulsive buying behaviour
In terms of price sensitivity, the results of a PayPal study indicated that 56.0% of consumers in the USA shop online out of the price advantage as compared to 68.0% in India and 83.0% in China.
Online stores can pay attention to the website stimuli, marketing stimuli, and affective stimuli, and take steps to optimize consumers’ online buying experience. Specifically, in terms of website stimuli, IT capacity should be enhanced.
The sensitivity of sales to price and user ratings across developing and developed countries shows that countries with a lower level of income inequality are more sensitive to rating volume when it comes to economic factors.
Online shopping websites marketing stimuli for impulsive buying
- Time scarcity promotion/ advertising is positively influencing online impulsive buying behaviour, with or without the role of high hedonic motivation as the moderator.
- A price promotion attribute’s positive impact on online impulsive buying behaviour is accepted as long as it does not involve hedonic motivation as a moderator.