What is it about?
Have you ever left home to do your shopping and returned with stuff that you never planned to buy? For many, it's not an exceptional scenario. Impulse buying is a common phenomenon in which many marketing and advertising executives are understandably interested. But does consumer impulsiveness manifest itself similarly in other areas of life, and is it uniform across cultures? Surprisingly, little research has been carried out on these broader subjects, so researchers here set out to investigate more closely.
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Why is it important?
In this paper, we do the following: • Reposition consumer impulsiveness as a global, rather than a context-specific, trait • Demonstrate that it has three-dimensional structure (imprudence, lack of self-control and self-indulgence) • Extend the consumer impulsiveness scale beyond the shopping context and establish its universality across cultures • Explore differences in the influence of the three dimensions of consumer impulsiveness on failures to self-regulate behaviour in five domains: driving, eating, entertainment, shopping and substance use
Perspectives
Key takeaways Collectivistic cultures (e.g. Singapore): Consumers allow multiple distinct patterns of behaviour based on the social positions occupied by an individual and may think of themselves as 'good' and 'bad' in many different ways (e.g. smart, calculative, impulsive or irrational). There was no correlation between self-indulgence and lack of self-control. Individualistic cultures (e.g. USA): Consumers contrast the idea of an independent individual against the constraints of external social forces. They may not be able to make the distinction between thinking of themselves as good and bad in different ways, shaping a narrative that fits one conception. There was a positive correlation between self-indulgence and lack of self-control.
Professor Piyush Sharma
Curtin University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Looking beyond impulse buying, European Journal of Marketing, May 2014, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/ejm-08-2011-0440.
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