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J Consum Policy (2011) 34:197210 DOI 10.1007/s10603-011-9158-5
ORIGINAL PAPER
Bas Verplanken & Ayana Sato
Received: 10 August 2010 /Accepted: 7 March 2011 / Published online: 26 March 2011# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2011
Abstract Impulsive buying grossly violates the assumptions of homo economicus. A variety of perspectives on impulse buying are presented, which have been put forward in consumer, economic, social, and clinical psychology. These include heuristic information processing, time-inconsistent preferences, personality traits and values, self-identity, emotions, conscious self-control, and compulsive buying. These perspectives may sometimes lead to contradictory or paradoxical findings. For instance, impulse buying is often associated with joy and pleasure but has also been found related to negative emotions and low self-esteem. Our argument is that impulsive buying can be understood in terms of psychological functioning, in particular as a form of self-regulation. Regulatory focus theory is then used to bring the various perspectives together by classifying each as a promotion focus strategy (e.g., seeking pleasure) or a prevention focus strategy (e.g., avoiding feelings of low self-esteem). Finally, the question is discussed whether consumers can and should be protected against impulsivity. Our assertion is that regulation against misleading practices that play on the vulnerabilities of impulsive buyers could be sharpened and that information provision to consumers and retailers aimed at strengthening consumers self-regulatory capacities may mitigate adverse consequences of impulse buying.
Keywords Impulse buying . Compulsive buying . Self-regulation . Consumer policy
Most of us are familiar with returning home with products we never intended to buy in the first place. Impulsive buying has long been identified as a significant behaviour in retail business (e.g., Stern 1962). Impulsive buying is a universal phenomenon, although it may be manifested in different ways subject to individual differences such as gender (e.g., Dittmar et al. 1995, 1996; Verplanken and Herabadi 2001) or culture (Kacen and Lee 2002). Impulse buying is an interesting psychological phenomenon. This was unequivocally put forward by Rook (1987), who described
B. Verplanken (*) : A. Sato
Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, UK e-mail: [email protected]
The Psychology of Impulse Buying: An Integrative Self-Regulation Approach
198 B. Verplanken, A. Sato
impulse buying as a psychologically driven urge to buy. Since this seminal article, impulse buying has been approached from very different...