Content area
Full text
1. Introduction
Impulse buying is prevalent in the Indian retail industry. Neilson report suggests that eight of every ten supermarket shoppers buy an impulse item and one in every five shopping baskets contains an impulse purchase (Cheng, 2014). According to Mr Muhtar Kent (CEO of Coca Cola), more than 70 percent of all shoppers' decision to buy Coke is impulsive in nature (as cited in Mohan et al. , 2013). The prevalence of impulse buying in the Indian retail industry makes this field of study worthy of academic investigation.
By definition, impulse buying refers to unplanned (Stern 1962; Piron, 1991) and sudden (D'Antoni and Shenson, 1973) purchases, triggered by stimuli (Stern, 1962). Impulse buying behavior (IBB) is preceded by an urge to buy (buying impulse (BI)) something spontaneously without any consideration for the potential negative consequences (Rook, 1987). Impulse buying is driven by the impulsive buying tendency (IBT) and affect (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998; Mohan et al. , 2013). IBT is a psychological trait which explains individual differences in the proclivity to react to stimuli and buy on impulse (Verplanken and Sato, 2011). The term "affect" refers to a valenced state of emotional feelings (Hogg et al. , 2010). Consumers' exposure to impulse stimuli is associated with emotional arousal of high intensity, which leads to the BI (Dholakia, 2000). If the BI overrides the consumer's self-control, IBB is exhibited (Hoch and Loewenstein, 1991) unless thwarted by situational impediments (Dholakia, 2000).
There is a lack of agreement in the literature regarding the role of affect (at the dimension level) in impulse buying. Affect has two orthogonal dimensions: positive affect and negative affect (NA) (Silvera et al. , 2008). While extant research has reported positive affect as an antecedent of the BI (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998; Mohan et al. , 2013), the role of NA in impulsive buying remains inconclusive. One group of researchers argued that NA may drive impulse buying (Verplanken et al. , 2005) and individuals exhibit impulse purchases to get relieved from stress and depression (Youn and Faber, 2000), while a recent study conducted by Mohan et al. (2013) in the Indian context did not find any significant role of NA in impulse buying. As, the role of NA in impulse buying is...