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.