Psychology of Impulse Buying
We’ve all been victims of impulsive buying. Maybe you went shopping with a friend, swearing you weren’t going to spend any money and then *poof* you own a new shirt. Or maybe a new kitchen appliance caught your eye and you had to have it. Or maybe you had actually planned on going shopping, for, let’s say, groceries, and you end up buying a few items that weren’t on your list. Whatever the context may have been or what degree of planning you might have done prior to shopping, if you have ever bought something you did not plan on ahead of time (whether or not you can justify the purchase after the fact), you have participated in the culture of impulse buying. There are countless factors that influence an individual’s rash decision to buy impulsively and much research has been done to better understand this behavior. Furthermore, marketers often use this knowledge to promote impulse buying in the hopes of increasing their bottom line. But while impulse buying does indeed mean more product bought, it can also lead consumers to harbor negative post-shopping feelings about the producer and retailer (Zhang and Wang 2010).
