Reflective and impulsive predictors of impulse buyinga multidisciplinary approach

Resumen

While previous literature indicates that impulse buying is a product of impulses, this study proposes that both reflective and impulsive components contribute to the act of impulsive purchase. In addition, this controversy appears more prominent when we pursue mixed findings regarding habitual and cultural components of impulse buying. Moreover, some aspects of impulse buying, including heuristic nature and social influences, beg more empirical evidence or precise definitions. Following a dual-system model that distinguishes between a reflective and an impulsive system, this research mainly hypothesizes that unhealthy snack impulse buying can be differentially influenced by either impulsive system or reflective system as a function of self-regulatory resources. In this respect, drawing from different areas of research, this study provides a comprehensive model of impulse buying. Several pre-tests were administrated to (1) justify the selected products; (2) provide appropriate tools for the main study. Two laboratory experiments were conducted to validate the proposed framework. In experiment 1, participants were randomly assigned to one of the conditions of the 2-group design (self-regulatory resource depletion vs. control condition). Furthermore, the design of experiment 2 was a 2 (self-regulatory resource depletion vs. control condition) by 2 (descriptive norm vs. no heuristic) between-subjects design. The findings of experiment 1 yielded the first empirical foundation for reflective and impulsive aspects of impulse buying behavior. The results supported the fact that self-regulatory resources moderate the impact of both reflective and impulsive determinants on unhealthy snack impulse buying. The second experiment showed that the descriptive norm is associated with the unhealthy snacks impulse buying only when enough self-regulatory resources are available. This experiment also demonstrated that the influence of descriptive norm on unhealthy snack impulse buying is significant only for those with interdependent self-construals.