The Effect of Culture and Salespersons’ Retail Service Quality on Impulse Buying

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of culture and salespersons’ retail service quality on impulse buying and provides evidence that service quality moderates the effect of culture on impulse buying. The experiment uses a 2 (culture of participants: Singaporean versus American) by 2 (retail service quality: poor versus good) between-subjects factorial design with 102 Singaporean and 88 American working adults recruited from companies in Singapore. It finds that for both cultures, good service leads to higher impulse buying than does poor service. The significant interaction between culture and service quality on impulse buying indicates that when service is good, Singaporeans show higher impulse buying than do Americans. In contrast, when service is poor, Singaporeans reveal lower impulse buying than do Americans. The implication is that multinational companies should invest in creating and assuring good service quality when they do business in collectivist cultures but might give relatively higher weight to other kinds of competitive advantages when they do business in individualist cultures.

Consumers between supermarket shelves: The influence of inter-personal distance on consumer behavior

“…Up to 80% of all retail buying decisions are made directly at the point of sale (POS) and in front of the shelf (Pornpitakpan and Han, 2013). Research shows that consumers react -consciously or unconsciously -to the smallest changes at the POS and are influenced by the attributes of a consumption area (Baker et al, 1994).…”

Integrating Certainty Effect and Noninteractive Social Influence Into Impulse Buying

“…Impulse buying intention. Impulse buying intention is defined as a consumer's likelihood of purchasing an item that he or she had no prior plan to purchase (Pornpitakpan & Han, 2013). Impulse buying intention is more difficult to resist when consumers feel the urge to purchase products in response to certain psychological traits, such as the pressures of life and feelings of pleasure (Zhang, Prybutok, & Strutton, 2007).…”

“…Personality traits are known to significantly influence impulse buying intention (Pornpitakpan & Han, 2013). Individual behavior is determined by the intention to perform that behavior (Schuman & Johnson, 1976).…”

“…In many cultures impulse buying behavior is now recognized as a prevalent style of consumption involving various products, and annual sales greater than US$4 billion are attributed to impulse buying in the US alone (Kacen & Lee, 2002). The results of a survey revealed that Canadian adults engage in impulse buying to cheer themselves up, and goods that are bought on impulse include clothes, shoes, and technology products (Pornpitakpan & Han, 2013).…”

“…Verhagen and van Dolen (2011) found that both representational delight (individual factor) and functional convenience (situational factor) were related to online impulse buying. Pornpitakpan and Han (2013) explored the effects of culture (individual factor) and salesperson's service quality (situational factor) on impulse buying. In addition, previous researchers have indicated that there was a significant difference between individual and situational factors to measure impulse buying (Amos et al, 2014).…”