Comparing between product-specific and general impulse buying tendency: does shoppers’ personality influence their impulse buying tendency?

Abstract

The sudden urge to buy, referred to as impulsive buying, is triggered by both a gamut of extraneous, market-related stimuli and internal psychological factors. The extant literature on this has majorly focused on the antecedents of impulsive shopping, prominent among these include traits (like sensation-seeking and impulse buying tendency or IBT), motives (utilitarian, hedonic), shoppers’ resources (time and money), and marketing stimuli. Although personality is a key determinant of consumer decision-making, the role of personality traits, specially extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness, in impulse buying is not conclusive. Also, there exists a need for analysing impulse buying behaviour with respect to product-specific situations rather than general IBT. The present study fills this gap by analysing the role of three personality traits on impulse buying. A scenariobased online experiment was conducted, and the sample respondents were randomly categorised into two groups. The former group had respondents with an instrument to measure their IBT in general, while the later had respondents for whom the instrument was shared with a scenario built around the product category of apparel. With the data set of 386 respondents, the study reveals that the relationships between the two personality traits—extraversion and neuroticism, and IBT—are independent of the product category. However, the influence of conscientiousness on impulsive buying tendency depends on the product category. The study concludes with managerial implications.