How Sales Promotions Influence Impulse Buying PDF Download

Author: Mahshid Omid
Publisher:
ISBN:
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Languages : en
Pages : 83

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Book Description
Although past research demonstrates that a significant percentage of impulsive purchases come from sales promotions, no studies to date have examined the psychological mechanisms leading to this influence. To better understand the role of sales promotions in impulse buying situations, this dissertation aims to address this critical gap. To this end, first of all, we investigate cognitive-affective-behavioural processes underlying the influence of sales promotions on impulsive purchases. Further, we examine the moderating role of sales promotions category on these processes. Finally, we study how these processes differ among consumers with different personality traits. This dissertation adopts a cognitive-affective approach to impulse buying. It claims that cognitive deliberation also plays a mediating role between external stimuli and impulse buying behaviour, although affective reactions would have more influence. Emotions towards promotions are defined in terms of subjective feeling states experienced by consumers at a given point of time towards a promotion. Clusters of emotions with the same polarity are referred to as either positive or negative promotion affect. Promotion cognition is defined as the evaluative meaning of a sales promotion in terms of the benefits that can be derived out of it with the purchase of the promoted product. We investigate the mediating role of promotion affect and promotion cognitions in impulse buying process of promoted products. We also examine the relevance of the construct of promotion affect by studying whether promotion affect and promotion cognition play complementary or redundant roles in predicting consumer impulsive behaviour. Our results reveal that two separate coexisting mechanisms, affect transfer and cognitions, are the underlying foundations of impulse buying decisions of promoted products. Consistent with the Appraisal theory, cognitive evaluation of the benefits of a promotion prompts consumer affective responses. This promotion affect in turn mediates the influence of promotion cognitions on consumer impulse buying behaviour. Past research finds that consumer impulsive responses to promotions differ from a sales promotion category to other. However, the cause underlying this difference is still understudied in the literature. This dissertation aims to address this gap. It attributes this difference to the fact that psychological antecedents vary between purchases of products promoted with different types of promotions. Therefore, it examines the moderating role of sales promotion category on the process of impulse buying. The results confirm this role. They demonstrate that impulsive purchase of a product promoted by a non-monetary sales promotion is an all pleasure act; hedonic promotion cognitions and positive promotion affect that consumers experience have a significant influence on their impulsive purchase. On the other hand, in the case of monetary sales promotions, consumers make a cost-benefit evaluation where they also consider their utilitarian cognitions and negative affect that they may experience towards the sales promotion. The role of consumer personality traits is emphasized in both the impulse buying and behavioural pricing literature. To contribute to this understanding, this dissertation investigates the role of consumer personality traits in cognitive-affective triggers of impulsive promotional responses. Two consumer personality traits related to consumers' attention and reaction to sales promotions and their propensity to make impulsive purchases are buying impulsiveness trait and deal-proneness trait. The results confirm that these traits influence affect and cognition that consumers experience towards promotions. They also moderate the process of impulse buying. Moreover, the results of our analysis about the relationship between buying impulsiveness and deal-proneness traits show that although both traits result in increased buying urges and impulsive purchases, they differ in focus and underlying affective and cognitive reactions. Impulsive consumers make impulsive purchases due to their strong reward seeking tendency, whereas the impulsive purchase of deal-prone consumers is a deliberative act of self-indulgence to gain from utilitarian benefits of promotional offers. This dissertation makes important contributions to the behavioural pricing and impulse buying literature. Our results demonstrate how sales promotions encourage consumers to purchase on impulse. We also confirm that promotion affect is a previously overlooked standalone predictor of consumer promotional responses. Moreover, sales promotion category and consumer personality traits are found to moderate cognitive-affective-behavioural triggers of impulsive promotional purchases. Finally, managerial implications are provided and it is discussed how to manipulate sales promotion characteristics in order to encourage impulsive purchases across consumers with different levels of buying impulsiveness and deal-proneness traits. Keywords: Buyer behaviour, Impulse buying, Sales promotion, Emotional response, Promotion affect, Cognitive response, Promotion Cognition, Buying impulsiveness trait, Deal-proneness trait.