IMPULSIVE PURCHASING BEHAVIOR
1. What is the purpose of the article? Why did the author(s) conduct the research and/or write the article?
Impulsive purchasing is unplanned purchasing that depends on a rapid decision-making. There are many variables influencing the impulsive purchasing behavior such as demographic factors, income, cultural orientation, price promotions, and many other varying variables. The previous studies on the impulsive purchasing analyze the influence of these factors on the purchasing behavior. However, the previous studies miss an important point in analyzing the influential factors on the impulsive purchasing behavior: the influence of the social environment and the social relations on individuals’ purchasing behaviors.
2. What are the different sections of the article? Summarize each section.What are the propositions or hypotheses? If there are no hypotheses, then what is the framework or model developed?
In the first part of the study, the authors define the impulsive purchasing behavior. Following the definitions, they show the results of the previous studies in an order. The first part is basically a literature review part. From the small summaries of the previous studies with a few words, they develop the idea of the missing subject in the impulsive purchasing behavior. The studies show that the social influence or the characteristics of the people with whom a person shops together might be causing an important influence on the individual purchasing behavior. The authors suspect that there is a different influence between shopping with friends, shopping with family members, and shopping with younger friends.
In the second part they determine the hypothesis statements as follows:
H1: Presence of peers would stimulate greater impulsive purchasing tendency of sports team-licensed merchandise than presence of family members.
H2: High group cohesiveness would stimulate a greater impulsive tendency to purchase sports team-licensed merchandise than low group cohesiveness.
H3: High susceptibility to influence would stimulate a greater impulsive tendency to purchase sports team-licensed merchandise than low susceptibility.
H4: Presence of high-cohesive peers would stimulate a greater impulsive purchasing tendency than presence of low-cohesive peers.
H5: High susceptibility to influence would stimulate greater impulsive tendency to purchase sports team-licensed merchandise than low susceptibility within presence of peers.
The main keywords in the hypothesis statements are presence of peers, presence of family members, high group cohesiveness, low group cohesiveness, high susceptibility to influence, low susceptibility to influence, presence of high cohesive peers, presence of low cohesive peers, high susceptibility within peers, and low susceptibility within peers. In another word, the authors implement a cross-term analysis to understand the relationship between the social influential factors on the impulsive purchasing behavior.
In the following part, the authors would like to test the hypothesis statements by setting a research setting. They make two separate research setting and for each study they pick a sample. For the first study, they use the convince sampling. Three research assistants proceed to the ten classes at the different high schools. A hundred and two high school students accept to involve in the research setting. To these students, the authors present an audio. In the audio, there are different characters. Each character is assigned to a student in the research sample. The student acted as a character and answered the questions asked. This research setting allows the authors to create a better way to exhibit the social influence on the individuals’ purchasing behavior. The tests on the data gathered from the sample group shows that the hypothesis statements cannot be rejected other than the H3 hypothesis.
The following part tells the story of the second study. In the second study, the researchers picked 270 volunteer high school students and they repeated the study 1. As different from the first study, the participants are promised with an incentive of baseball game. The entire five hypotheses were supported by the results of the second study.
In the last part of the paper, the authors discuss the results. The results show us that the entire five hypotheses could not be rejected depending on the information we get from the data. Thus being with family members decrease the impulsive purchasing while being with cohesive young friends increases it.
3. What are the major concepts (constructs) presented in the article? Define each of them.
The most important concept the paper works on is the impulsive purchasing behavior. Impulsive purchasing behavior is an unplanned shopping. In another word, before you get into a shopping centre; however, after getting into the place, you realize that you want to buy the product suddenly. Thus, an important change occurs and you feel like buying it. This behavior is researched by many scientists. There are plenty of factors causing the impulsive purchasing behavior. Some of them are related to the personality, some of them are related to the person’s income and some others are related to the external influences such as how the product is designed and served, price promotions, social influences on the individual (pushing him to buy it or pulling him from buying the product). All these factors determine our purchasing behavior. Especially, the impulsive purchasing behavior is sensitive these factors.
Another important concept in the paper is the classification of the social influence: Cohesiveness, family member effect, friend effect, susceptibility, and age are different social characteristics. The authors create cross-hypotheses among the different social characteristics and they test them by using two studies.
The last concept I would like to mention is the authors’ research methodology. They use convince sampling. They find volunteer students to involve in the research. They develop a scenario. Ask the participants to act their characters and during this play, they apply a questionnaire to the participants. While answering the questions in the questionnaire, the participants take their assigned characteristics into account. This way, without creating a social pressure on the individuals in the sample, the researchers can observe the results without any social influence bias.
The paper includes some important concepts. However, the paper mostly looks like a literature review paper. The literature review gives some borders for the paper and then they develop five simple hypotheses. The relations between the concepts are not developed well. From this perspective, the paper does not present a fully developed model. The paper presents some pieces and there is no certain function is defined between the variables. Without creating a well-designed model, we might miss some cross-variable effects on the impulsive purchasing behavior. For instance, susceptibility and cohesiveness terms might have a further interaction and there is no trace of this relationship is mentioned in the paper. Thus, a micro model should be developed to understand the behavior of every individual. The output variable can be the purchasing behavior and the all the other factors can be the input variables in the model.
4. What were the major findings?
The paper analyzes the social relations’ influences on the impulsive purchasing behavior. As known the society has some written and unwritten rules. Especially, the unwritten rules might influence the social behaviors of the individuals. The impulsive purchasing behavior is a very sensitive process to the external influences. For instance, if the person with some people who leads him to save more, then it will not be possible for this person to decide to buy something in a short time period. Each time when he tries to buy something, the people around him will intervene his behaviors and tell him not to buy quickly. Therefore, the impulsive purchasing behavior will be blocked. Family members, more experienced older people, people who suffer from the poverty and some other similar people are like that. They always tell you to save more. This study analyzes the family members’ influence on an individuals’ impulsive purchasing behavior.
On the other side, some people push people to buy more things. Mostly, age and experience in life are the determinants of the characteristics of these people. If an individual is with a relatively older person, and then it is high possibility that he will not be an impulsive purchaser. If the person is younger, and then it is possible that he will be tended to buy something buy making rapid decisions.
Also the personality traits are important. If you like buying new things, in another word, if you like shopping, and any simple stimulation leading you to buy or reminding you to buy, you will buy it. In this respect, another factor is the financial situations of the individuals. If an individual has enough resource to spend relatively free, then it is possible that this person will be impulsive buyer.
The last thing to talk about is the cohesive behaviors. Individuals, especially youngsters, can be big fan of some ideologies, sports teams, or using a kind of food or drink. We can give varying examples of cohesive behaviors. There is a strong relation between the cohesive behaviors and the impulsive purchasing behaviors. Individuals attitudes against purchasing things in the communities transforms into another form. For instance, a person who does not like drinking alcohol might drink many different alcoholic beverages in a short time period. Another essential example of this would be the sports team fans. Even if these fans cannot afford some expensive products, they might buy them just to support their teams. This purchase is appreciated in the community of fans.
5. What are the marketing implications?
The information on the impulsive purchasing behavior is very essential for the marketers. Understanding this behavior might help the marketers develop new strategies to stimulate the sales. The most important result that could be derived from the impulsive purchasing behavior for a marketer, people are more tended to spend more together with the right social settings. For instance, if people believe that a certain product is good for their families or for their children, then it will be easier to create social pressure to make the parents buy this product. Many parents are very alert to the developments in the training of the children from 0 to 18 years old. Even we can claim that this is a cohesive behavior. Also, we know that parents have a network between themselves through their children relations. Thus, if a marketer would like to sell a specific product to these parents, he or she needs to develop propaganda for the product. If he or she can make the parents believe in the product, then it will be easier for him or her to increase the sales.
Consequently, analyzing and comprehending the impulsive purchasing behavior, a marketer can build the best strategy for his or her products. The proper sale design including social pressure, product qualities, product placing in markets, and many other factors influencing the impulsive purchasing has a great importance for the marketers.
REFERENCE
C, Chen-Yueh, and Yi-Hsiu. L, and Wen-Mei. C. (2013). Impulsive Purchasing Behavior for
Professional Sports Team-Licensed Merchandise—From the Perspective of Group
Effects. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 22 PP 83-91.
