The Impact of Consumer Innovativeness, Prestige Price Sensitivity and Need for Emotion on Impulse Buying and Satisfaction

Abstract

Impulse buying (IB) refers to unplanned purchases without much reflection (Bellenger et al. 1978; Youn and Faber 2000; Beatty and Ferrell, 1998) and it is defined by Rock (1987: 191) as a state of “sudden, often powerful and persistent urge to buying something immediately”. Commonly conceptualized and measured in the literature as a tendency to buy things on impulse (Rook and Fisher 1995; Peck and Childers 2006), IB is “inconsistent with rational choice models” (Silvera, et al. 2008: 23) and has been linked to affect and emotion, specifically excitement, pleasure and an urge to buy (Rook 1987). Silvera et al. (2008) argue that there is relatively little research on IB from a psychological perspective and hence a lack of understanding of the psychological constructs underpinning this behavioral tendency. Earlier research failed to provide personality-grounded explanations of IB (e.g. d’ Antoni and Shenson, 1973; Cobb and Hoyer 1986; Youn and Faber 2000) suggesting that this stream of research may have focused on relationships between IB and ‘irrelevant’ personality traits (Youn and Faber 2000). Later research has, however, linked IB to a number of personality traits, specifically, lack of control, stress reaction, absorption (Youn and Faber 2000) as well as the Big 5 (Verplanken and Herabadi 2001). Additionally, Silvera et al.’s (2008) research attempts to validate Verplanken et al.’s (2005) contribution on the psychological states underlying IB, highlighting the relationship between IB and subjective wellbeing, affect, self-esteem and social influence. Lately, research has examined IB in relation to variety seeking tendencies, optimal stimulation level and price consciousness/sensitivity (Sharma et al. 2010; Liang 2012), and to other factors, such as product involvement and product knowledge, (Sharma et al. 2010), store promotions and environmental cues (Kacen et al. 2012; Peck and Childers 2006). IB has also been linked to satisfaction in the sense that consumers do not necessarily view IB as normatively wrong; but use IB as a means of satisfying certain needs, in addition to the need for the product (e.g. Hausman 2000) such as hedonic desires, novelty, variety, social interaction and self-esteem needs (Piron 1991; Rook 1987; Hausman 2000). This study seeks to extend the current understanding of the underpinnings of IB and satisfaction by focusing on specific personality traits that seem more relevant for marketers, including consumer innovativeness, prestige price sensitivity and need for emotion.