State-trait interactions in regulatory focus determine impulse buying behavior

Abstract

Little research has focused on motivational state-trait interactions to explain impulse buying. Although the trait chronic regulatory focus has been linked to impulse buying, no evidence yet exists for an effect of situational regulatory focus and no research has examined whether the fit of chronic and situational regulatory focus can influence impulse buying with actual consumptive consequences rather than purchase intentions. Two laboratory experiments (total N = 250) manipulated situational regulatory focus before providing opportunities for impulse buying. In addition, cognitive constraint was manipulated as a potential boundary condition for regulatory focus effects. Situational promotion focus increased impulse buying relative to situational prevention focus in participants with strong chronic promotion, consistent with regulatory fit theory and independently of cognitive constraint. Surprisingly, situational promotion focus also increased impulse buying in participants with strong chronic prevention, but only under low cognitive constraint. These results may be explained by diverging mediating cognitive processes for promotion vs. prevention focus’ effect on impulse buying. Future research must focus more on combining relevant states and traits in predicting consumer behavior. Marketing implications are discussed.

Impulse buying: A systematic literature review and future research directions

“…Consumer resources are significant predictors of impulse buying (Atulkar & Kesari, 2018; Krishna et al, 2021). A shopping trip budget determines a consumer's buying power, and a larger budget can trigger positive emotions resulting in impulse buying (Badgaiyan & Verma, 2015; Chang et al, 2014).…”

“…Consumer-related factors Three consumer-related factors derived from impulse buying literature act as antecedents of impulse buying behaviour: consumer characteristics (Miao et al, 2019;Parsad et al, 2021), self-control (Nghia et al, 2021;Sun et al, 2021) and consumer resources (Atulkar & Kesari, 2018;Krishna et al, 2021). These variables are further explained below.…”

Influence of Analytic Processing on Divergent and Convergent Thinking Tasks: The Role of Rational and Experiential Thinking Styles

“…Numerous studies have shown that individuals’ traits, tendencies, and styles can influence their psychological and behavioral performance, along with temporary priming manipulations, such as trait power and state power ( Schmidt-Barad and Uziel 2020 ), trait mindfulness and state mindfulness ( Egan et al 2018 ), trait attachment and attachment priming ( Cuyvers et al 2022 ), and chronic regulatory focus and situational regulatory focus, etc. ( Krishna et al 2021 ). Thinking styles reflect the relatively stable tendency of individuals to rely on the two processing modes, and they may interact with analytic processing priming.…”

Effects of relational embeddedness on users' intention to participate in value co-creation of social e-commerce platforms

“…Individual regulatory focus affects consumer behaviors, such as advertising acceptance intention and impulsive consumption, in different ways (Gao et al , 2020; Krishna et al , 2021), and understanding user-centered factors can help explain their potential effects on individuals' participation in the VCC thinking process (Naletelich and Spears, 2020). Regulatory focus captures the final state of the goal pursuit process, in which the goal is to “approach gains and avoid nongains” or “approach nonlosses and avoid losses” (Pham et al , 2023).…”