Exploring Impulse Buying in Services: Toward an Integrative Framework

Prior research on impulse buying focuses mostly on goods, ignoring its incidence in services despite growing evidence about the prevalence of impulsive behaviors across diverse consumption contexts. This paper introduces an integrative conceptual framework to study impulse buying in both goods and s...

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Main Authors: Sharma, Piyush, Sivakumaran, B., Marshall, R.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Springer US 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/23415
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author Sharma, Piyush
Sivakumaran, B.
Marshall, R.
author_facet Sharma, Piyush
Sivakumaran, B.
Marshall, R.
author_sort Sharma, Piyush
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Prior research on impulse buying focuses mostly on goods, ignoring its incidence in services despite growing evidence about the prevalence of impulsive behaviors across diverse consumption contexts. This paper introduces an integrative conceptual framework to study impulse buying in both goods and services by using perceived risk as a focal construct in the impulse buying process and reports findings from two empirical studies. The first study uses a mall intercept survey to show that perceived risk is lower and likelihood of impulse buying is greater for services with higher tangible (vs. intangible) attributes and higher search (vs. experience and credence) properties. The second study uses a lab-experiment to show significant differences in the influence of three relevant consumer traits (consumer impulsiveness, optimum stimulation level, and self-monitoring) on the level of perceived risk and impulsiveness in purchase decisions for six different services with varying levels of attributes (tangible vs. intangible) and evaluation properties (search, experience, and credence). Overall, the two studies provide substantial evidence of the presence of impulse buying in services and useful insights for researchers and services marketers.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-234152019-02-19T05:35:05Z Exploring Impulse Buying in Services: Toward an Integrative Framework Sharma, Piyush Sivakumaran, B. Marshall, R. Experience Search Intangible Credence Consumer impulsiveness Optimum stimulation level Self-monitoring Tangible Impulse buying Prior research on impulse buying focuses mostly on goods, ignoring its incidence in services despite growing evidence about the prevalence of impulsive behaviors across diverse consumption contexts. This paper introduces an integrative conceptual framework to study impulse buying in both goods and services by using perceived risk as a focal construct in the impulse buying process and reports findings from two empirical studies. The first study uses a mall intercept survey to show that perceived risk is lower and likelihood of impulse buying is greater for services with higher tangible (vs. intangible) attributes and higher search (vs. experience and credence) properties. The second study uses a lab-experiment to show significant differences in the influence of three relevant consumer traits (consumer impulsiveness, optimum stimulation level, and self-monitoring) on the level of perceived risk and impulsiveness in purchase decisions for six different services with varying levels of attributes (tangible vs. intangible) and evaluation properties (search, experience, and credence). Overall, the two studies provide substantial evidence of the presence of impulse buying in services and useful insights for researchers and services marketers. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/23415 10.1007/s11747-013-0346-5 Springer US fulltext
spellingShingle Experience
Search
Intangible
Credence
Consumer impulsiveness
Optimum stimulation level
Self-monitoring
Tangible
Impulse buying
Sharma, Piyush
Sivakumaran, B.
Marshall, R.
Exploring Impulse Buying in Services: Toward an Integrative Framework
title Exploring Impulse Buying in Services: Toward an Integrative Framework
title_full Exploring Impulse Buying in Services: Toward an Integrative Framework
title_fullStr Exploring Impulse Buying in Services: Toward an Integrative Framework
title_full_unstemmed Exploring Impulse Buying in Services: Toward an Integrative Framework
title_short Exploring Impulse Buying in Services: Toward an Integrative Framework
title_sort exploring impulse buying in services: toward an integrative framework
topic Experience
Search
Intangible
Credence
Consumer impulsiveness
Optimum stimulation level
Self-monitoring
Tangible
Impulse buying
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/23415