Key drivers of impulse purchase online: an exploration in an emerging market

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the drivers of impulse purchase online in an emerging market where internet penetration is growing rapidly. We used in-depth interviews to understand consumers’ impulsive buying behavior online. We also carried out a survey to identify factors that influence consumers’ impulse buying online. The findings from interviews indicate consumers who have been using the internet for 3 to 5 years and those who enjoyed shopping in general are more likely to make impulse purchases online. Products valued at less than 2000 Indian Rupees (INR) and certain trusted websites that offer a large product variety are favored during impulsive online purchase. Results from a factor analysis and subsequent regression analysis of survey data indicate that a customer-product factor and a price factor were the two major drivers of impulse purchasing online. The influence of risk was not as significant as expected. Emerging markets are important because they represent huge potential for future growth-for example, India has a population of over 1.2 billion people and the country’s economy that has been growing at over 5 percent per annum for almost two decades. A recent report by Morgan Stanley (qz.com, 2018) predicts that online retail in India will grow from $15 billion in 2016 to $200 billion in 2026. The rapid growth is expected to happen because of increased internet penetration, falling data costs, shift to smartphones and proliferation of digital payment systems. In line with growth of online retail, we can expect also a growth in impulsive purchasing online in the Indian market. The rapid growth of online retail all over the world has led to growing academic interest in online buying behavior and there are many articles on this topic in the information systems, management and marketing journals. In our literature review for this paper, we focused on papers that proposed new conceptualizations and papers which reported research carried out in emerging markets. In one of the early papers on the topic, Madhavram and Laverie (2004) have conceptualized impulsive buying online in terms of a change in purchaser’s intention regarding purchase when exposed to hedonically charged stimuli. Chan, Cheung and Lee (2017) carried out a systematic review of the literature on online impulse buying research and concluded that the “Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR)” and the “Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)” frameworks were the most commonly used theoretical foundations in empirical studies.