A structural equation model of impulse buying behaviour in grocery retailing

PurposeEnvironmental changes, specifically the economic crisis and the growing penetration of digital technologies, have produced significant changes in shopping habits designed to create new paradigms for impulse buying behaviour. A new scenario seems to be opening up where customers enter the store much more prepared than in the past searching for products they had planned to buy. The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of impulse buying in a context of more planning and preparation for shopping.Design /methodology/approachThe data were obtained using a structured questionnaire from 316 respondents interviewed instore thanks to the cooperation of a leading Italian retail chain. We conducted a two-stage approach mall-intercept survey method to collect data. Firstly, we interviewed customers before entering the store, enquiring them about the pre-shopping preparation and shopping enjoyment tendency. Secondly, we interviewed the same customers at the end of their shopping trips, asking them to indicate which purchases were unplanned. Then, shoppers answered to questions regarding their general tendency to engage in impulse buying, the urges experienced to make impulse purchases, the level of positive and negative affect experienced during the shopping trip.FindingsIn the structural model tested with LISREL 8, we found that pre-shopping tendency influences directly impulse buying: confirming our hypotheses, a higher pre-shopping preparation lead to lower levels of impulse buying. Results also showed that the personality variables (shopping enjoyment tendency and impulse buying tendency) influenced impulse buying through positive affect and urge to purchase. Our research did not find support for the relationship between negative affect and urge. Finally, higher levels of urge to buy impulsively lead to higher levels of impulse buyingOriginality/valueFrom the review of past and recent literature, we have not found a model that considers the influence of pre-shopping tendency on impulse buying behaviour. This paper addresses this major gap in extant literature by including pre-shopping tendency among the individual characteristics (impulse buying tendency and shopping enjoyment tendency) taken into consideration by past contributions.     

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.     

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.     

Shopping value in online auctions: Their antecedents and outcomes

Online auctions present unique characteristics in the consumer decision-making process that raise new issues related to consumer shopping behaviors in auction-based purchases. The present research examined the relationship between consumer characteristics (i.e., compulsive buying behavior, variety-seeking tendency, and price sensitivity) and shopping value (i.e., utilitarian and hedonic) in online auctions and found that both compulsive buying behavior and variety-seeking tendency are critical factors of shopping value in the online auction environment. There were no positive relationships between price sensitivity and shopping value. The results of this study also revealed that consumers’ shopping value positively influenced their preference, which, in turn, formed behavioral intentions in online auctions. While utilitarian value was found to be a significant predictor of behavioral intentions, hedonic value was not. However, hedonic value influenced intentions indirectly through preference.     

Antecedents and outcomes of fashion innovativeness in retailing

Challenging market conditions force the fashion industry to find new ways of introducing new products, adjusting and stimulating unplanned purchases within fashion stores. Fashion innovativeness and visual merchandising play a key role in this challenge. This study examines how fashion innovativeness is related to motivational factors for shopping and actual unplanned purchases in fashion retailing. It also investigates the moderating effect of visual merchandising on the relationship between fashion innovativeness and unplanned purchases. The data, obtained through a consumer survey, were analysed using factor analyses and structural equation modelling. The results show that fashion innovativeness is positively affected by sexual attraction, shopping for recreation, recognition enhancement, and aesthetic expression, and positively influences unplanned purchases. The link between fashion innovativeness and unplanned purchases is moderated by visual merchandising. This study also provides recommendations for retailers on increasing unplanned purchases in their stores using the concept of fashion innovativeness.     

Consumers’ personality and compulsive buying behavior: The role of hedonistic shopping experiences and gender in mediating-moderating relationships

Although existing research suggests that personality plays an important role in explaining compulsive buying behavior, there is still potential space to diagnose the theoretical mediational mechanisms underlying these effects or the extent to which these relationships vary across different consumer demographic groups. Indeed, the role of specific personality traits on hedonistic shopping experiences and compulsive buying still awaits an in-depth examination and clarification. Thus, the present research contributes to existing knowledge by: (1) examining hedonistic shopping experiences (HSE) as a mediating mechanism on compulsive buying (CB); and (2) investigating the role of gender as a moderating variable. Using a sample of 363 adults and data derived from the US market, we confirmed the role of hedonistic shopping experiences, a central trait, in mediating the effects of cardinal traits (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness and agreeableness), on compulsive buying, a surface trait. Specifically, neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience exerted a more indirect and positive influence on compulsive buying, while conscientiousness and agreeableness showed a stronger direct and negative relationship with hedonistic shopping experiences and compulsive buying. In addition, neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experience were a stronger driver of compulsive buying for women than for men, while conscientiousness and agreeableness jointly decreased the importance of hedonistic shopping experiences, and more strongly inhibited compulsive buying for women than for men. The research findings offer important theoretical, public policy and marketing implications.     

Shopping plans,buying motivations,and return policies: impacts on product returns and purchase likelihoods

Product return behavior and factors that contribute to product returns are an under-researched area, despite significant importance to manufacturers and retailers. The current research attempts to fill the gap by focusing on two factors that shape consumer purchase behavior: (1) whether purchases are planned or unplanned, and (2) whether hedonic or utilitarian motivations drive purchases. The findings show that purchase plans and buying motivations have distinctive and interactive impacts on pre-purchase concerns, self-estimated likelihood of returning purchases, and purchase intentions with or without return policies. When hedonic motivation drives purchases, unplanned (vs. planned) purchases lead to higher return concerns, higher return likelihood, and lower buying intentions. When utilitarian motivation drives purchases, planned and unplanned purchases have comparable return concerns, return likelihood, and buying intentions. This interaction effect on buying intentions dissipates when a lenient return policy is offered.     

I need to touch it to buy it! How haptic information influences consumer shopping behavior across channels

Increasingly interactive touch-enabling technologies are mitigating the lack of haptic information for products online. This paper explores how consumers’ haptic traits – instrumental and autotelic – indirectly influence their impulse buying and channel stickiness intentions by the means of utilitarian and hedonic shopping motivations. A structural equation model investigating three shopping channels (i.e., physical, web, and mobile) reveals that haptic traits act differently across channels. Consumers with strong haptic traits prefer physical and mobile channels. The autotelic dimension is key in online channels. Findings support the implementation of effective multichannel strategies among retailers of high-haptic products, showing the mobile to be a valuable alternative to in-store shopping.     

Buying Groceries in Brick and Click Stores: Category Allocation Decisions and the Moderating Effect of Online Buying Experience

The large majority of online grocery shoppers are multichannel shoppers who keep visiting offline grocery stores to combine convenience advantages of online shopping with self-service advantages of offline stores. An important retail management question, therefore, is how these consumers divide grocery purchases across the retailer's online and offline channel. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of category characteristics on the allocation pattern of multichannel grocery shoppers and find that category allocation decisions are affected not only by marketing mix differences between the online and offline channel, but also by intrinsic category characteristics like perceived purchase risk and shopping convenience. In addition, we examine the effect of online buying experience. In line with expectations, we find that it can affect allocation patterns in different ways: (i) it attenuates the perceived risk of buying sensory categories online, thereby reducing differences in online category share, (ii) it reinforces marketing mix (assortment) effects, thereby making online category share differences more pronounced, and (iii) it has no effect for factors such as promotions that are easy to evaluate without experience, thereby leaving the online category share stable. In addition to different experience effects across allocation factors, we also observe variations in experience effects across consumer segments.     

Investigating the impact of shopper personality on behaviour in immersive Virtual Reality store environments

The increasing availability of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) hardware in private households has opened up significant opportunities for innovations in online retailing. Online retailers can develop realistic, albeit simulated, three-dimensional retail environments that use immersive elements to create a more exciting online shopping experience. Nevertheless, to date, very little is known about how observed shopper behaviour in immersive VR store environments compares to existing knowledge in the physical or other online retail research literature. To that end, this paper focuses on human personality traits and whether these translate to familiar observations of in-store shopper behaviour. Specifically, the research examined the ‘Big Five’ personality traits – agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience, and their impact on purchase behaviours such as product inspection time, proportion of private label purchases, and impulsive buying. It is further investigated how the purchase behaviours impact the outcomes of the shopping trip. The results revealed a variety of expected relationships between purchase metrics and the outcomes of the shopping trip; however, in stark contrast to the findings of extant studies, shopper personality did not show any impacts on the investigated purchase behaviours. Further research is needed to determine whether this failure to replicate past studies of shopper personality was, in fact, due to differences in the store environment or rather due to the moving from survey-based method of shopper data collection to naturalistic observation. Nonetheless, this finding has important implications for e-retailing strategies and market research practices.     

Income and time pressure: a person-situation grocery retail typology

A person-situation segmentation framework is proposed. The demographic variable 'income' and the situational variable 'time pressure' were integrated and applied to grocery retail shopping. Using a combination of individual scanning data and a mail survey, we divided a sample of moderate to frequent grocery shoppers in a large Belgian retail organization into four grocery-shopping segments - 'money-poor, time-rich', 'money-poor, time-poor', 'money-rich, time-rich' and 'money-rich, time-poor'. Significant differences existed between these segments in several demographic, behavioural and attitudinal characteristics, including: demographic - age, composition and size of household, number of children at home, marital status, location, education and occupation; behavioural - amount spent in the store, buying pattern for different product categories and different task definitions; attitudinal - overall attitude towards grocery shopping and different grocery-shopping attribute saliences.     

Immediate or delayed! Whether various types of consumer sales promotions drive impulse buying?: An empirical investigation

In the present study we investigate whether various types of sales promotions together with hedonic shopping motivation (value shopping) and positive affect drive impulse buying. The study further explores the moderation impact of trait constructs viz deal proneness and impulsive buying tendency in impulse buying. In our research, sales promotion tools are classified into four categories namely, (a) monetary-immediate (MI), (b) non-monetary-immediate (NMI), (c) monetary-delayed (MD) and (d) non-monetary delayed (NMD) types of sales promotions. Data were analysed using SEM. Results revealed that out of the four categories of promotional tools only MI and NMI drive impulse buying. Each of MI, NMI, MD and NMD is found to be related to positive affect whereas MI, NMI and NMD impact value shopping but MD does not. The role of IBT and DP as moderators has been evident. The study has significant theoretical as well as managerial implications. Test of mediation confirmed the role of urge to buy as mediator.     

Changes in consumption patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analyzing the revenge spending motivations of different emotional groups

People tend to alleviate their negative emotions by shopping. Considering the change of shopping behavior during COVID-19 outbreak, negative emotions are the key contributors to this change. In this light, this study aims to investigate how negative emotions caused by COVID-19 affect shopping behaviors. This study classified consumer groups based on their perceived negative emotions (i.e., anxiety, fear, depression, anger, and boredom). By clustering analysis, four groups (i.e., group of anxiety, depression, anger, and indifference) were derived. Then, this study examined how each of the emotional groups differently affect the shopping-related motivations (i.e., mood alleviation, shopping enjoyment, socialization seeking, and self-control seeking) and shopping behaviors (i.e., shopping for high-priced goods and buying of bulk goods). Results revealed all emotional groups affect socialization seeking and influence high-priced shopping intentions. However, depression and indifference are positively associated with socialization seeking and influence bulk shopping intentions. In addition, other emotions except for anxiety affect mood alleviation and influence high-priced shopping intentions. Finally, anger is associated with self-control seeking and affects bulk shopping intentions. This study enables practitioners and researchers to better understand how people control negative emotions by shopping in pandemic situations such as the current COVID-19 crisis.     

Heterogeneity of deal proneness: Value-mining,price-mining,and encounters

This study uncovers the heterogeneity of deal proneness in relation to the cost of deal shopping (e.g., time and effort) and shopping capital (i.e., skills and expertise in shopping). The possession of shopping capital determines the cost of deal shopping and how consumers take advantage of deals. Findings of in-depth interviews include: (1) different types of deal shopping—value-mining, price-mining, and encounters, (2) strategies of deal-prone consumers with a high level of shopping capital—creating shortcuts, prospective thinking, and engineering deals, and (3) the sources of deal gratification that result from different goals of deal-prone behaviors.     

The moderating role of shopping trip type in store satisfaction formation

Consumers may weigh store attributes differently depending on the type of shopping trip. For example, fill-in shoppers likely value convenience, due to the ad-hoc nature and urgency of such trips. However, no study has yet explored the effects of shopping trip types on satisfaction formation. This study investigates how three types of shopping trips — major, regular fill-in, and special fill-in — affect satisfaction formation. Using data for all Dutch grocery chains from 2009–2014, we show that service, price, and convenience are important drivers of satisfaction. We also find that the effects of these drivers on store satisfaction depend on the shopping trip type. Major shoppers, for instance, treat service factors as less important to their satisfaction than other shoppers do. Convenience is a more important driver of satisfaction for regular fill-in shoppers. Price is a more important determinant of satisfaction on fill-in trips related to special occasions like birthdays and family dinners.     

Mobile Shopping Through Applications: Understanding Application Possession and Mobile Purchase

Smartphones have penetrated rapidly and mobile shopping provides promising market opportunities for retailers. However, little is known about mobile shopping patterns and inferring these patterns from online shopping may provide misleading insights. We combine mobile log data and a mobile panel survey, and examine two stages in mobile shopping: the possession of shopping applications (hereafter, apps) and the purchase via shopping apps. Our exploratory investigation of mobile data and its empirical analyses provide three substantive findings. First, online experience and mobile experience both positively relate to the possession of shopping apps. Second, browsing behavior for non-shopping apps helps understand the possession of shopping apps as it reflects user preferences for acquiring more apps. Third, purchasing decisions are explained by digital experience (i.e., online experience and mobile experience) and browsing information from shopping apps, with other factors being of little predictive value. The implications for mobile retailing research and practice are discussed.     

The influence of consumer decision‐making styles on online apparel consumption by college students

Apparel purchases now constitute one of the fastest‐growing segments of e‐commerce. Thus, there are strong theoretical and managerial reasons to better understand consumer characteristics associated with buying apparel online. This paper investigates motivations for online apparel consumption using the Consumer Styles Inventory. Data from a sample of 357 US college students showed that quality consciousness, brand consciousness, fashion consciousness, hedonistic shopping, impulsiveness and brand loyalty were positively correlated with online apparel shopping. Price sensitivity was negatively correlated with online spending.     

Ongoing search among industrial buyers

Literature on organizational buying behavior pays little attention to ongoing search, i.e., information search activities that are independent of specific purchase decisions. This study employs ethnographic methods to investigate the nature of ongoing search in the context of trade shows. The study contributes to the literature on information search among industrial buyers by highlighting its bias in favor of search processes that lead to short-term purchases. The research findings have strong implications for trade show scholarship, as they cast a critical light on the “received view” on how to effectively select, manage and measure returns on trade show investments. This article offers a more complex and nuanced view of visitor behavior at trade shows and introduces a broader perspective on the significance of these events for their underlying markets.     

Investigating the consumer–environment interaction through image modelling technologies

Abstract

This study uses an innovative research tool to evaluate the hypothesis of a consumer–environment interaction. A new computer graphics methodology keeps track of the time spent and the number of purchases made during shopping, together with several other behavioural measures. A laboratory experiment uncovered an interaction effect in dwell time and number of purchases between the type of shopping trip (fill-in trip vs. major trip) and the consumers' layout preference. Shoppers taking major trips were more prone to shop in a free-form layout, whereas those taking fill-in trips tended to prefer a grid layout. The article discusses implications for research and practice, identifying areas for future research.     

U.S. online shopping: Facts,fiction, hopes and dreams

Much online shopping research has been viewed from the seller׳s side, i.e., volume, timing and the like. This paper looks at online shopping/buying from the buyer׳s view. Based on 285,000+ individual responses from an online U.S. panel, the questionnaires, gathered between 2006 and 2013, form the analytical base. Findings include an increase in online shopping volume among a declining customer base. Consumer reported details such as leading online retailers (Amazon.com), online product preferences, comparisons of online and fixed location research and buying scenarios, buying influences and the like are discussed. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research are included.