Antecedents and consequences of chronic impulsive buying: Can impulsive buying be understood as dysfunctional self‐regulation?

Abstract

Researchers reach different conclusions about the functional or dysfunctional nature of impulsive buying behavior. While many note the use of impulsive buying as a form of mood regulation, there is disagreement about whether this is functional or dysfunctional and the extent to which it causes financial harm. This paper draws on data from a U.K. national survey sample (N = 109,472) to contribute to these debates. Study results suggest that impulsive buying is more common for those who have most need to regulate mood and who have the least effective emotion regulation strategies. This suggests that impulsive buying may be understood as a failure of self‐regulation in relation to long‐term goals and as a strategy for mood regulation. Contrary to some prior claims in the retail management and marketing research literature, the study shows higher levels of impulsive buying to be associated with more adverse financial outcomes (which are not confined to the most extreme manifestations of the trait). While ineffective emotion regulation is associated with higher propensity to buy impulsively, the findings also suggest that effective emotion regulation may to some extent mitigate the adverse consequences of the propensity to buy impulsively. The implications for ethical management, research, and policy are considered.

Money Attitudes, Personality and Chronic Impulse Buying

“…The association of neuroticism with impulsive buying could explain the popular concept of “retail therapy” where shopping is understood as means of mood repair and enhancement and is consistent with “mood repair” explanations of impulsive buying (e.g. Atalay & Meloy, ; Fenton‐O'Creevy et al, ).…”

“…Many studies that have looked at individual difference correlates of impulsive buying (IB) have concentrated on dysfunctional emotional regulation or prevention and promotion focus. For example, Fenton‐O'Creevy et al () showed that Behavioral Inhibition and Activation (BIS/BAS) was logically and significantly related to IB. Some studies have attended to specific personality correlates of IB.…”

“…Many authors distinguish impulsive buying from compulsive buying; with compulsive buying typically distinguished as a pathological condition that involves repeated and excessive purchases leading to serious detriment to quality of life. However, as Harnish and Roster () noted, there is a strong conceptual overlap and compulsive buying may simply represent the more extreme case of impulsive buying; a view reinforced by evidence of the financial harm associated with impulsive buying (Fenton‐O'Creevy, Dibb, & Furnham, ).…”

“…This is important for two reasons. First, there is evidence that impulsive buying is a contributor to poor financial well‐being, and not just at the pathological levels studied in compulsive buying research (Fenton‐O'Creevy et al, ). Second, if attitudes to money significantly affect impulsive buying behavior, this may provide greater opportunities for effective educational and therapeutic intervention than links between personality traits and impulsive buying or links between contextual influences and impulsive buying.…”

<p>Imagination Matters When You Shop Online: The Moderating Role of Mental Simulation Between Materialism and Online Impulsive Buying</p>

“…It should be noted that mental simulation was a categorical variable; it could not directly enter the regression equation, so we needed to convert it into dummy variables first. In addition, because of the unbalanced gender ratio (females accounted for 82% of all participants) in our study and the gender differences in impulsive buying reported in previous studies,31 we controlled gender to avoid its extraneous effects on the dependent variable. We used 1000 bootstrap samples, and biases were corrected at 95% confidence intervals (CI) to calculate the effect of each variable.…”