Television shopping: the effect of persuasive strategies on parasocial interaction, subjective well-being, and impulse buying tendency among older women

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of persuasive strategies on perceived parasocial interactions between the host and viewers in the television home shopping environment. The effects of perceived parasocial interactions, perceived social involvement, and perceived loneliness on mood, and mood’s consequent influence on perceived risk and impulse buying tendency are examined. A questionnaire assessed perceived use of persuasive strategies, parasocial interaction with the host, social involvement, loneliness, mood, risk, and impulse buying. Through two different sampling methods, 109 usable responses from female television home shopping shoppers aged 55 to 80 were retained for data analyses. Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) version 7.0 was used to derive the maximum-likelihood estimation for analysis of the model. In this study, three models were tested—the theoretical model, the fully recursive model, and the empirical model. The fully recursive model was run after the theoretical model resulted in marginal fit. The effect of level of persuasive strategies on parasocial interaction was not significant. However, the results indicated that parasocial interaction between hosts and viewers significantly influence older middle-aging and elderly consumers’ subjective well-being. Discussions of the results, practical implications, and limitations are also described.