Clicking or Buying? Impacts of Website Quality and Website Attitude on E-Impulse Buying

Abstract

Online shopping has been the fastest growing channel of shopping for more than a decade with sales growing an annual rate of 25 percent (Brohan 2007). With approximately 221 million users which are about 71 percent of the total population in the U.S. (Phillips 2010), the Internet has become a popular shopping medium for consumers who have more shopping choices than ever before. According to Forrester Research (2009), it is estimated that online retail will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent to reach $229 billion in 2013 and account for 15 to 20 percent of total retail sales in the U. S. Given the rapid growth of online shopping, impulse buying has become a prevalent feature of consumer shopping behavior and it accounts for a significant percentage of the products sold across a broad range of product categories (Madhavaram and Laverie 2004). As consumer’s buying behavior is vital to success of e-commerce practitioners, it becomes important to understand the nature of online impulse buying in response to consumers (Dawson and Kim 2009). While there has been substantial research on impulse buying in traditional stores, a limited amount of impulse buying research has been conducted in the context of online transactions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate various factors that may influence online impulse buying (e-impulse buying).