Impulsive Buying

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the phenomenon of impulsive buying in the fashion industry. The online and offline channels are compared to determine which is perceived as leading to more impulsive buying.

The approach towards impulsive buying

As a result of the literature review, three research questions are proposed and examined through an online self-administered survey with 212 valid responses.

Findings

Results show that the offline channel is slightly more encouraging of impulsive buying than the online channel; factors that encourage online impulsive buying explain this behavior to a greater extent than do discouraging factors; social networks can have a big impact on impulsive buying.

Hint2mint presents research limitations/implications

Findings are limited by the sampling plan, the sample size, and the measurement of some of the variables; only one product type is analyzed. Further research is needed to confirm that shipping-refund costs and delayed gratification (traditionally, discouraging factors of online buying) encourage online impulsive buying; clarify contradictory results regarding the role of online privacy and convenience. This research contributes to the validation of a scale to measure the influence of social media on impulsive buying behavior.

Practical implications

Offline companies can trigger the buying impulse to a greater extent than online retailers. Managers must carefully select social networks to encourage impulse buying, Facebook, and Instagram is the most influential; Twitter has the least impact.

Originality/value

This study compares the impulse buying phenomenon in both the physical store and the internet. Moreover, the influence of social networks on impulse buying is also explored.

The importance of impulsive buying in consumer behavior has been clear for some years. Previous research both in the academic and the professional fields has shown that impulsive buying represents between 40 and 80 percent of all purchases, depending on the type of product. Impulsive buying has aroused the interest of researchers and organizations which have tried to understand the psychological underpinnings of this behavior, as well as “impulse temptations”, to boost sales.

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However, because of the serious impact of the economic crisis and the growing use of the internet as an information search and purchase channel, consumer behavior seems to have changed towards a more planned and informed process. At the same time, several authors claim that the internet indeed favors impulse buying. Thus, a certain degree of uncertainty now exists about the role of impulse buying, both in the conventional, physical store and the online channel, as well as about which channel encourages this behavior to a greater extent. Although previous research has addressed the impulse buying phenomenon, focusing either on the physical store or on the internet in isolation, there is a lack of studies analyzing both the channels simultaneously.

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