The effect of unmindfulness on impulse purchasing behaviours in the context of online shopping from a classical attitude theory perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT As e-commerce transactions increase, impulsive purchases also significantly rise. Although many studies on impulse purchasing behaviours have been conducted, limited studies investigate the effect of unmindfulness on impulse purchasing behaviours in the context of online shopping. In this study, using the three key stages (i.e. cognition-affection-conation) of the classical attitude theory as an overarching framework, we propose a research model to explain the direct and indirect influences of unmindfulness on online consumers’ impulse purchasing behaviours. This study mainly examines the relationships among online consumer’s unmindfulness and purchasing impulsiveness traits as individual consumer’s cognitive characteristics in the cognition stage, emotional attention to the visual appeal and shopping enjoyment of an e-commerce site in the emotional affection stage, and urge to purchase impulsively as a conative factor of online consumers’ impulse purchasing behaviour in the conation stage of the theory. Using the Partial Least Square (PLS) technique, we test the proposed model with empirical data collected from online consumers. Based on the findings of the study, we discuss theoretical contributions for e-commerce researchers and practical contributions such as marketing strategy for e-commerce managers.