Impulsive purchasing in grocery shopping: Do the shopping companions matter?

Impulsive purchasing occurs when consumers succumb to urges to make purchases without careful evaluation. Unlike research examining personal factors as the predictors of impulse purchase behavior, our study incorporates internal and external factors by exploring the interpersonal influences of different types of shopping companions. A survey was conducted with 791 participants who indicated the types of companions they accompany when grocery shopping and reported how each type influences their purchase decisions. Results show that parents and spouses are the most common shopping companions and the most influential on the shoppers' impulse purchase decisions compared to other types of companions (e.g., significant others, colleagues, children, friends, and other shoppers). Additionally, the effect of different shopping companions varies based on the shoppers' internal characteristics and the social distance between the shopper and the shopping companion. Finally, while individual factors (e.g., age, gender, income, education, impulsivity, and emotional susceptibility) significantly affect shoppers’ impulse purchase decisions, the magnitude and direction of the effect of these factors differ significantly based on the type of shopping companion.     

Influence of hedonic and utilitarian motivations on retailer loyalty and purchase intention: a facebook perspective

Social networks are an innovative tool that people use to communicate with family, friends and, increasingly, businesses. To optimize social networks as a marketing strategy, apparel retailers must understand consumers׳ motivations to interact with retailers via social media. We argue consumers׳ motivations for shopping on Retail Facebook Pages (RFP) compared to traditional retail formats may differ. The purpose of the study was to examine the influence of utilitarian and hedonic motivations (i.e., time savings, information access, bargain perception, and experiential shopping) on purchase intention and loyalty among consumers that use RFP. Using SEM, we show that experiential shopping influences loyalty, but not purchase intention, that bargain perception influences neither purchase intention nor loyalty, that information access influences time savings and loyalty, and that loyalty impacts purchase intention.     

When and How Multitasking Impacts Consumer Shopping Decisions

This project provides insights into how multitasking impacts consumer decision-making. The effect of multitasking on shopping task performance is investigated across three studies. Authors propose that the effect of multitasking on consumers’ shopping task performance (e.g., to purchase low calorie snacks for a get together) is moderated by whether the consumer is in a how (implementation) or why (deliberation) mindset. To the benefit of consumers, results from two lab studies and a field experiment in a retail context suggest that shoppers in how-mindsets can multitask without any negative impact on shopping task performance. However, consumers in a why (deliberation) mindset are negatively affected by multitasking and this effect is mediated by task-induced stress. Results demonstrate that intervention to reduce the stress level eliminates the negative impact of multitasking on consumers in why-mindsets. Taken together, the results suggest that interventions to channel consumers to an implementation mindset or strategies to alleviate the stress levels can help consumers avoid negative impact of multitasking on shopping decisions.     

Building Shopping Arousal through Direct Marketing in Retail Environment

This article attempts to analyze behavioral drivers which influence consumers’ leisure shopping behavior and measure customer value through empirical investigation in Mexico. The study reveals that outsourced salespeople significantly stimulate customer interest toward buying products and trigger shopping arousal. Product attractiveness and pre-purchase arousal generated by the sales promoters influences consumer buying decisions. The study reveals that pre-purchase arousal is felt by the consumers through product advertisements, inter-personal communications, and product simulations provided by the sales promoters. Consumers experience post-purchase arousal as an extended benefit associated with purchase of the product.     

Toward a conceptualization of the online shopping experience

This research article explores the content of consumers′ experience when they shop online and proposes a first step in conceptualizing the ‘online shopping experience′ (OSE). First, we carried out an extended literature review and proposed an integrative conceptual framework. Then, we relied on a consumers discourse analysis with four focus groups with consumers who differ in terms of age, gender and online shopping experience.We define the OSE and propose a conceptualization through four core dimensions: the physical, ideological, pragmatic and social dimensions. Connections are established between the flow concept and the ‘traditional’ dimensions of experience, and specific shopping values are identified. Moreover, an appropriation process of commercial websites is revealed; beyond purchase intentions and rituals, the OSE is embodied by the use of online tools and patronage routines. Finally, social interactions with Facebook friends are one of the new practices considered.     

Impulse buying tendency in live-stream commerce: The role of viewing frequency and anticipated emotions influencing scarcity-induced purchase decision

Despite the prevalence of scarcity-induced sales promotion in live commerce, scholarly inquiry began to address impulsive buying recently. This research traces live-stream shopping experiences to scarcity-induced purchase decisions. Grounded in the stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm, this research examines the mediating role of viewing frequency in the relationship between past purchases and impulse buying tendency. The aim is to unravel the relationship between impulse buying tendency and scarcity-induced purchase decisions by examining the mediation of anticipated emotions. A self-administered online survey with 376 respondents using criterion-based judgment sampling techniques. The data was validated through a two-step SEM approach using SmartPLS3 package. The result supports that viewing frequency and anticipated emotions fully mediated the relationship between past purchases and future purchase decisions. This study contributes to appreciating the importance of viewing frequency in live-stream commerce strengthening the performance of impulse buying tendency and triggering anticipated emotions (regret and rejoices) in a scarcity-induced purchase decision.     

Trauma's effects on shopper choice confusion: The role of psychological hardiness and retailer strategies as mitigating factors

Retailers must understand how trauma influences the consumer shopping journey and identify ways to mitigate any potential adverse effects. Two studies were conducted to explore trauma in the retail environment. First, a conceptual model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) based on survey data collected from 324 participants. Findings indicate that consumers who report previously experiencing traumatic events feel anxiety while shopping in retail environments, negatively influencing their ability to make purchase decisions. This outcome is due to challenges in adequately assessing stressful environmental stimuli and developing positive coping mechanisms. Consumer propensity for psychological hardiness was found to moderate this relationship. Next, a follow-up qualitative study from 110 consumers who reported experiencing instances of trauma identified potential ways for retailers to help consumers who have experienced trauma feel more comfortable in shopping environments. These findings extend research on trauma and consumer shopping behavior by identifying its impacts on choice confusion and stress appraisal and suggesting how retailers can support shoppers through a trauma-informed approach.     

Social media or shopping websites? The influence of eWOM on consumers’ online purchase intentions

This study empirically tests and compares the influence of friends’ recommendations on social media and anonymous reviews on shopping websites in the context of online purchase intention. For this purpose, we analyse the impacts of these two platforms based on the components of information adoption model (IAM) which are borrowed as information quality, information credibility, information usefulness and information adoption. We conduct a survey and find anonymous reviews as more influential on consumer’ online purchase intentions than friends’ recommendations on social media. However, as this result was contrary to that expected, we conduct another study through in-depth interviews in order to enlighten our results found in the first study. In Study 2, we find the reasons why consumers prefer anonymous reviews rather than friends’ recommendations. Information quantity, information readiness, detailed information and dedicated information are factors which make shopping websites superior than social media in terms of the impact of electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Academic and managerial implications are discussed.     

Leveraging the co-evolution of offline and online video games: an empirical study

Considerable research has been carried out on online shopping and the implications of this purchasing format for consumers and retailers. Most of these studies have focused on consumer attitudes towards online shopping, and how these can be useful predictors of online shopping adoption. Notwithstanding these insights from adoption theory, existing research has yet to distil the most effective means of understanding consumers’ attitudes towards online video game purchases. Based on a qualitative study, our study contributes to literature on adoption theory by presenting some explanations involving online video games purchases by identifying salient perceptions of online and offline motivations and advances ideas on the facilitating role of incentives in making purchase decisions.     

How Attachment Affects the Strength of Peer Influence on Adolescent Consumer Behavior

This research examined how attachment affected the peer influence on adolescent consumer behavior. Results showed that attachment toward family and toward peers emerged together. Adolescent attachment anxiety strengthened the peer influence in consumption while attachment avoidance weakened the peer influence. Anxiety was positively related to adolescents’ perception of friends’ greater knowledge, spending when shopping with friends, and motivation to comply with friends’ suggestions on purchases directly and indirectly through consumer susceptibility to informational and normative influence. In contrast, attachment avoidance decreased the tendency to shop often with friends and the motivation to comply in a purchase. This study revealed that the influence of individual attachment orientations on interpersonal relationships can be extended to the field of consumption.     

The Role of Anticipated Emotions in Purchase Intentions

Key personal inputs to decision making reside in expectations about whether a purchase or nonpurchase will make one feel better. Integrating several theoretical approaches, this research proposes a holistic framework formed by four kinds of anticipated emotions (AEs) resulting from the crossing of positive‐ or negative‐valenced emotions with action or inaction. Specifically, this research proposes that consumers under a purchase scenario tend to consider positive and negative AEs of both purchase and nonpurchase in their decisions. Research in this area to date has been sparse and focused mostly on AEs with regard to purchase, but not nonpurchase. The results of four studies confirm that AEs influence purchase decisions in a coordinated way depending on their instrumentality, motivating purchase or nonpurchase. AEs also partially mediate the effect of outcome valence on purchase decisions. Taking the status quo bias as a theoretical basis, this work proposes that the amount of information of favorable and unfavorable outcome messages has a greater influence on AEs motivating purchase than AEs motivating nonpurchase. Finally, future research lines are proposed to expand the use of this fourfold framework and more generally to understand the role of forward‐looking emotions in decision processes.     

Examining shopping mall consumer decision-making styles,satisfaction and purchase intention

Understanding consumer decision-making (CDM) styles is essential for market segmentation, positioning and crafting marketing strategies within a market. Few studies have examined the structural relationship among decision-making styles that consumers exhibit during mall shopping, level of satisfaction and purchase intention. The purpose of this study was to examine CDM styles as the antecedents and predictors of level of satisfaction and purchase intention. Based on the Consumer Styles Inventory, eight CDM styles that individual exhibit during shopping mall activities are proposed in terms of utilitarian and hedonic perspectives. We hypothesize these eight CDM styles as a set of predictors of customer satisfaction and purchase intention. A total of 327 valid paper-and-pencil questionnaires were collected from several shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Partial least squares (PLS) path modelling approach, a structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique was performed to test the proposed structural relationships. The empirical assessment supports that hedonic shopping styles consumers that exhibit high level of habitual, brand consciousness, fashion consciosness, recreational conscious style have lower levels of satisfaction and purchase intention during mall shopping while novelty and fashion conscious style consumers have lower level of satisfaction but do not unveil lower purchase intention. Utilitarian shopping styles consumers that exhibit high level of price conscious, confused by overchoice and high-quality conscious style have higher levels of satisfaction while impulsive/careless shoppers do not; and while price conscious, impulsive/careless, confused by overchoice consumers have higher levels of purchase intention but the high-quality conscious consumers do not unveil higher purchase intention. Further, there is a positive relationship between satisfaction and purchase intention. The practical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Should retailers encourage couples to shop together?

Many purchase decisions take place in social relationships, and yet few studies have specifically investigated couples’ purchase decisions made during shopping about products for later joint consumption. We hypothesize that romantic partners purchase more when they shop together than individually and that this effect is strong for vice products, particularly those without an organic label. For our empirical study, we asked romantic partners shopping together in a real-life context to make purchase decisions together or individually (our main experimental condition) in a self-programmed web store that offered 88 product variants (differing in category [vice/virtue] and labeling [with/without organic label]). Participants then filled out an online questionnaire on site. Results of a sequence of nested generalized linear models show that making purchase decisions together increases purchase amount (number of items selected) and purchase value (quantities selected multiplied by the corresponding willingness to pay), especially for vice products without organic labeling. In a second study, we benchmark these effects by comparing them with the effects of individual decision making and varying consumption mode (joint vs. individual consumption), using data from an online survey that followed the same structure as the main study. These effects, again estimated through generalized linear models, are negligible. Our findings strongly support the “accomplice” (rather than the “minder”) role of romantic partners in shopping. Therefore, retailers should target couples, encourage them to shop together, and emphasize joint consumption as a shopping goal.     

Something Free or Something Off? A Comparative Study of the Purchase Effects of Premiums and Price Cuts

As an alternative to promotional price cuts, retailers and manufacturers often rely on non-price promotion techniques, such as premium promotions, where consumers receive a free gift with the purchase of a product. We compare the effectiveness of premiums to that of price cuts, and study moderators of this comparative premium effectiveness. We use data from a large online shopping simulation study with more than 2,000 participants to model consumers’ purchase decisions in response to premiums and price cuts. Results indicate that the impact of premiums on purchase behavior is systematically lower than that of equivalent price cuts. However, a premium’s smaller sales impact may be offset by a cost advantage. This is especially true for private label brands where the premium’s purchase effects do not differ too much from those of a price cut. We calculate how large the cost advantage has to be for a premium to be more profitable than a price cut, and show that premiums entail risks as well as opportunities, for both manufacturers and retailers.     

Exploring Postconsumption Guilt and Pride in the Context of Sustainability

This research explores the feelings of guilt and pride experienced by consumers after a purchase decision that involves issues of environmental and social sustainability. Through a multi‐method design, the authors examine key dimensions that influence the process of emotional appraisal, illustrate the characteristics of appraisals of guilt/pride and investigate the consequences that emotions have on future choices. In this exploratory research, when a purchase decision includes an ethical dilemma, consumers were found to express guilt or pride even when the purchase is not intentional, i.e. forced by circumstances. Moreover, the study explores how emotions experienced after decisions may have a positive influence on the future purchase of sustainable alternatives. Finally, the paper proposes a new model that describes the process of emotional appraisal and reports on a number of dimensions that were found to lead to guilt and pride. The insights presented extend knowledge of two key consumer emotions and present important implications for practitioners promoting ethical products.     

Negative emotions,value and relationships: Differences between women and men

Service experiences are characterized by emotions that help shape the value in use received by the customer. Negative emotion plays an important role in all of consumer psychology and all too often consumers experience some degree of negative emotion during a consumption experience. This research sheds light on how these negative shopping emotions experienced by men and women in a typical shopping environment affect value and relationships in the form of shopper behavior, commitment and share of wallet. A theoretical process is explained and modeled with a sample of mall shoppers. Results overall suggest that negative emotions affect the shopping experience more for women than for men in terms of perceived value and loyalty. In contrast, the behavior–commitment relationship is stronger for men.     

Window displays and consumer shopping decisions

Window displays are an ubiquitous and prominent but under-researched element of retail strategy. This paper explores how the store and product category information communicated by a store's windows are related to consumers’ shopping decisions, such as store entry and product purchase, and how these relationships vary for consumer segments that differ in terms of their knowledge of the retailer's product(s). Results of a study conducted in the context of clothing retailers demonstrate that the store entry decision is related both directly as well as indirectly (through acquisition of inferred, store-related information) to the acquisition of observed, store-related information from window displays. However, it is product category-related information (e.g. fashion and product-self fit) rather than store-related information (e.g. merchandise and store image) that is more strongly associated with the product purchase decision. Moreover, consumers with medium levels of clothing knowledge are more influenced by windows in their shopping decisions than those with low or high levels.     

Peer presence promotes popular choices: A “Spicy” field study on social influence and brand choice

Retail research has highlighted how the presence of others can affect consumers' brand evaluations, purchase intentions, and choice behavior. This field study investigated whether the presence (vs. absence) of peers and other consumers, respectively, could influence consumers' propensity to purchase popular brands (i.e., a market leader) within a given product category. Consumers at a supermarket were observed when standing in front of a spice shelf and their choices were analyzed as a function of whether they shopped alone or in the presence of peers versus other consumers. The results revealed that peer presence, but not the mere presence of other consumers, increased consumers' inclination to make popular brand choices, and that this effect was mediated by their stated familiarity with the chosen brand. As such, peer presence seems to increase consumers’ reliance on heuristics and the accessibility of concepts linked to popularity, leading to congruent popular brand choices. Moreover, consumers shopping in the presence of others generally took a longer time before choosing a brand and touched slightly more products in the presence of other consumers. Taken together, these results contribute to theory refinement in social influence from ecologically valid conditions and offer a set of implications for companies, store managers, and people working in the food industry.     

How does shopping duration evolve and influence buying behavior? The role of marketing and shopping environment

This study investigates how promotional activities, mall size, and past shopping experiences affect customer shopping duration, and elucidates how shopping duration induces immediate, transient, and long-term effects on customer decisions of whether and how much to buy in the offline shopping mall format. We simultaneously model purchase incidence, purchase amount, and shopping duration to examine empirically the constructs’ dynamic impacts. The proposed model is calibrated using six-year-long transaction data of 43,326 customers that patronize malls operated by a large retail firm. The results reveal that shopping duration leads to an immediate increase in the amount spent by customers in a given period. The transient effects of shopping duration on purchase incidence and amount are significantly positive. However, in the long term, while purchase frequency appears to increase with cumulative shopping duration, purchase amount is negatively affected. Further, shopping duration increases with the size of the mall visited and the level of promotion but tends to converge to a lower level in the long term. Managerial implications for effectively managing customer experience are discussed.     

'One brand,three ways to shop': situational variables and multichannel consumer behaviour

To counter the growth in online retailing, high street retailers are increasingly adopting multichannel distribution strategies, seeking to target individual consumers via both physical and electronic channels as multiple routes to purchase. In order to develop successful marketing strategies within this environment, however, an understanding of consumer selection between available purchase channels is clearly needed. This paper explores the issue of shopping mode selection from an environmental psychology perspective, applying a traditional Belkian analysis of situational variables in a longitudinal study of consumer channel selection decisions. Preliminary findings from an empirical study of consumers of a leading UK fashion retailer are reported which reveal significant differences in the prevalence of different Belkian variables between shopping modes, suggesting a major role for situational influence during the channel selection process.