ASA University Review, Vol. 4 No. 2, July–December, 2010
Impulse Purchasing: A Literature Overview
Wahida Shahan Tinne*
Abstract
Impulse purchasing behavior is a mystery in marketing and in literature. Consumers themselves
named it as the deviation from standard, which explains a big sale of different goods every year.
At present when market competition is high and all types of companies apply promotion in their
activities, stimulation of impulse purchasing in the market of consumer goods may become a
strong competitive advantage. Evolution of impulse purchasing, process of consumer’s impulse
purchasing behavior, theoretical framework of impulse purchasing and various factors that
affect impulse purchasing are discussed in this paper. Several research of impulse purchasing
had been conducted both in Developed and Developing countries. Based on those researches,
four factors (consumer characteristics, store characteristics, situational factors and product
characteristics) are revealed which activate the impulse purchasing behavior and a new
impulse purchasing process is developed with these four influencing factors in this paper. As
there is no adequate research on this phenomenon, there is a scope to do quantitative research
on impulse purchasing traits in Bangladeshi consumers. Hopefully this paper will be helpful for
different retail stores, marketing managers and marketing graduates of Bangladesh to
understand the implementation of impulse purchasing.
Keywords: Consumer Buying Behavior, Impulse Purchasing Process, Consumer
Characteristics, Store Characteristics, Situational Factors, Product Characteristics
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
Why people choose one product or brand over another, how they make these choices, and how
companies use this knowledge to provide value to consumers are interesting phenomena of
consumer behavior. Churchill and Peter (1998) generated a model of the consumer buying
process including five steps:...