Exploring the Determinant Factors of Impulsive Buying Behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic among Indonesian Consumers

Rahmawati Rahmawati,Alfian Budi Primanto

doi:10.24252/minds.v8i2.23560

Rahmawati Rahmawati, Alfian Budi Primanto

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.24252/minds.v8i2.23560

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the global economy, igniting much fear and panic that disrupted buying patterns and behavior. This study aims to investigate the phenomenon of impulsive buying behavior during the COVID-19 crises by exploring the influences of panic buying, perceived scarcity, and the mediation role of fear appeals. This study uses path analysis which is processed by using the Preacher-Hayes technique. A total of 243 respondents participated in the study. The result of this study revealed that perceived scarcity and panic buying were successfully proved to be significant predictors of impulsive buying behavior. However, the direct effect of fear appeals and the mediation role of fear appeals and panic buying on the relationship between perceived scarcity and impulsive buying behavior were failed to prove in this study.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most complex and multi-faceted challenges that businesses have faced since first reported in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019
Lins & Aquino (2020) added that men buy more panic than women during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found that there is a positive correlation between panic buying scale and impulse buying, which means that the higher the tendencies of panic buying that scaled by consumers, the higher the possibilities of them to buy impulsively
The study sample included all socio-economic classes, where 49.8% of respondents were classified as lower-middle class, 39.9% belonged to the middle-middle class, and 10.2% belonged to the upper-middle class

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most complex and multi-faceted challenges that businesses have faced since first reported in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019. It has ravaged the global economic stability, but it igniting much fear and panic that disrupted buying patterns and shopping habits of consumers (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020; Naeem, 2020; Sheth, 2020). Carr (2020) even added that the US sales of guns and ammunition soar amid COVID-19 This phenomenon may happen in response to the fear of scarcity, biased information, social learning, lack of trust, and unconfident feelings with authorities (Arafat et al, 2020). They found that there is a positive correlation between panic buying scale and impulse buying, which means that the higher the tendencies of panic buying that scaled by consumers, the higher the possibilities of them to buy impulsively

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