FACTORS AFFECTING LEVEL OF IMPULSE BUYING
Author: Mehak Jain
Impulse buying is the buying of goods without any planning, the tendency of a customer to buy goods and services without advance planning. It can’t be categorized for one specific product. Impulsive buying can be seen in products like mobile phones, clothes, chocolates, cars, jewels etc. It is making an unplanned purchase that is based on irrational thinking. Marketers try to tap the impulsive behaviour of customers to boost up their sales mostly as this is their effective strategy. Impulse buying is a common enemy for the people who try to save their money but it just can’t seem to stop the aimless purchase. Many finance experts mention that any impulsive buying is terrible but it isn’t always the case. A good impulse purchase is a low-cost, high-reward purchase making sure to set up their limit on smaller purchases, whereas bad impulse purchase is expensive. These purchase at first give happiness but not have a long-term value. They’re often unnecessary. There are ugly purchases that are done by impulsive buyers which mostly has no purpose in life and also detrimental to savings. These are just for the thrill of the buyer.
There are some major factors that influence customers to do impulsive purchase. Customers are influenced by many different factors and marketers try to understand those factors accordingly. Mostly there are 5 factors that influence customers:
● Psychological Factors: This factor is difficult to measure the determinant of customers’ behaviour but they are powerful enough to influence a buying decision like motivation, perception, learning and attitude and beliefs of customers totally depend on impulsive buying.
● Social Factors: Humans are social beings and they love to live around many people and get influenced by their buying behaviour and try to imitate others and always wish to be accepted socially. Hence their impulsive buying decision is influenced by other people around them like getting influenced by family, roles and status, reference groups.
● Cultural Factors: Customers are highly influenced by their values and ideologies where they belong to a particular community, culture related to that community like their culture values, needs, wants, beliefs, subculture and their social class.
● Personal Factors: Factors that are personal to the customer which influence them to make an impulsive purchase are called personal factors. This factor differs from person to person, thereby producing different perceptions and consumer behaviour depending on age group, individual income, occupation and lifestyles.
● Economic Factors: Mostly consumer buying habits and decisions depend on the situation of a country or a market. When there is a positive economic environment they are more confident to spend on buying products whereas, a weak economy reflects a struggling market that impacted by unemployment and lower purchasing power like depending of personal income, consumer credits, family income, savings, assets available to the customers.
After when the customer understands their influence factors of buying decisions there are many factors that also affect customers for impulsive buying:
⮚ Mostly many customers are exaggerated by the internal environment of the store. The retail settings of stores are very influencing hence the in-store environment and physical appearance of the store influence customer’s decision.
⮚ Retailers tries to change customer’s choice, taste by using different pattern and strategy of prioritizing customer satisfaction by showing up the window display associating with customer’s purchasing attitude and physical charisma and charm of a store which influences customer to purchase.
⮚ Some customers also have an impulsive buying attitude which is unreflective so the purchase is done without judging the products.Some customers have a habit of focusing on instant satisfaction which leads to instant purchases.
⮚ As soon as the price down of products or any sales starts every customer run to purchase and the discounts, cheaper prices have always been a major influence on the customer.
⮚ Major buying decisions are done on stores as store ambiance has always played a major role in customer influence.
⮚ High level of income leads to impulsive buying as people with a high level of income tend to spend more than the one who earn low income. Hence, that capacity to buy any product depends on the income earned, individually.
⮚ Credits card persuaded many customers at impulsive buying because it cut down the extra efforts of an individual to go market. Now customers can directly use credit cards to adopt online methods of shopping and do impulsive purchases.
There are some simple ways also to beat impulse buying:
✔ Customers can create a 30-day buying list whenever they urge to buy something put it on their list and afterwards when required buy the item. This helps to stick to the rule and only exceptions and necessities were purchased.
✔ Going to a store if you have a specific necessity to purchase, and avoid going to the shopping complex.
✔ Just as the shopping complex, online shopping sites also creates the urge to buy, and also they make it too easy to buy something instantly, so stay away from these sites.
Try to categorize unplanned purchase and the factors that affecting you to make a impulsive buying decisions which will make a huge difference.
Reference:
Inside the mind of a shopaholic: the short book on how to stop impulsive buying by : Louis Aguila
Article by Laura Aragoncillo and Carlos Orus ( university of Zarafoza, Zaragoza, Spain) in Spanish Journal of marketing – ESIC ISSN-2444-9709 DATE:16-April-2018
Definition of impulsive buying from economictimes.com https://m.economictimes.com/definition/impulsive-buying