The effect of external factors on impulse buying. What is the role of
the big five personality traits in this relation?
Bachelor’s Thesis
Amsterdam Business School
Economics and business: business administration
Name: Oger de Vries Student ID: 10754768 Coordinator : Rob van Hemert Supervisor: Antoon Meulemans Date of completion: 26-06-2018
Statement of origniality
This document is written by Student Oger de Vries who declares to take full
responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original
and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references
have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision
of completion of the work, not for the contents.
Abstract
This study intends to investigate the relationship between the external and
internal factors that influence impulse buying. As the number of impulse buys
keeps growing, understanding this phenomenon becomes more and more
important to companies. In this study a survey (N=51) was conducted amongst
students and working people to find out what personality traits or external
factors could be determinants of Impulse buying decisions. Chi square test
revealed that the personality traits Agreeableness and Extraversion are in this
research proven to be linked to impulse buying. Also, it is found that external
factors play a big part in impulse buying, but the personality traits don’t seem
to have a significant impact on this relation.
Table of contents.
I. Introduction ……….…5
A. Research objective ……….…….6
II. Theoretical framework ……….……7
A. Impulse buying ……….…..7
B. External factors of impulse buying……….……8
C. Store layout……….…..8
D. Promotion……….….9
E. Internal factors of impulse buying……….……9
F. Big five personality traits ……….….10
III. Hypotheses and research purpose ………..11
A. Research purpose and design ………...11
B. Questionnaire design ………..11
IV. Research Method .………..13
A. Procedure ………13
B. Measurement………..….13
C. Statistical Analyses……….14
D. Sample………..…….15
V. Results………..…….16
A. Impulse buying results……….………16
B. Case specific results………..………20
VI. Discussion and conclusions………..……….25
A. Summary of conclusions……….………28
I. Introduction
According to the ‘centraal bureau voor de statistiek’ a typical Dutch family spends on average about 34.042 euros per year. More than a third of this goes to the consumption of primary and secondary goods. Recognising that the consummation of goods is the biggest part of a household’s budget it becomes clear that this is the area where companies can earn a profit (CBS, 2015).
Over the past years sales rivalry has increased amongst companies (Cool & Dierickx, 1993) forcing them to formulate selling strategies that would set them apart (Leigh & Marshall (2001)). A big part of a selling strategy is coming up with tactics that encourages shoppers to buy a certain product. Additionally, encouraging customers to buy products that they did not even came for specifically, which is known as impulse buying, is becoming more significant.
According to a Canadian news channel Canadians spend on average almost 4000 euros on impulse buys (CBC, 2012). A survey conducted by CreditCards.com in 2016 found that 5 out of 6 Americans admit to having bought impulsively, with 54 percent admitting having spent more than 100, - on impulse buys and even another 20 percent admitting having spent at least 1000, - on impulse. As the number of impulsive purchases have risen (Sienna Kossman, 2016) and (Stern, 1962), the need for understanding this phenomenon has become more important. It should be clear to companies that the field of impulse buying offers a lot of opportunities for extra sales and performance. Also, in order to win
customers, understanding what drives the impulse buyers could be critical.
At the moment we see that companies are trying to communicate and interact with customers in various ways to pass their products. Lately there has been quite some research on online shopping impulse behaviour. However, a survey conducted by ‘Loudhouse on behalf of LivePerson’ shows that more impulse buys are still done in-store than online (Marketingcharts, 2013). It is therefore that this paper focusses on in-store impulse buying behaviour.
A. Research objective
The main purpose of this research will be, trying to determine what the effects of external and internal factors are on impulse buying.
More specifically, this research will look at external factors such as promotion and store layout to see whether their impact can truly be classified as significant. As a mediator here, I will take an internal factor that influences customers in the purchase phase. These internal factors include for example individual consumer personality traits (Kacen & Lee, 2002) and (Youn & Faber, 2000) or cultural differences in consumer behaviour (Maheswaran & Shavitt, 2000).
In the end, this research should offer new conclusions about the correlation between previously named factors and impulse buying. The findings should build on current
II. Theoretical framework A. Impulse buying
Nowadays most people associate impulse buying with unplanned buying behaviour (Stern, 1962) and (Piron, 1991). Most researchers agree with this ‘simple’ vision, but, they do come up with their own definitions of impulse buying. This study won’t be primarily focussed on comparing different definitions of impulse buying, however understanding of the term is necessary. As such, I will shortly present some of these definitions.
According to Rook & Gardner (1993) impulse buying is an unplanned behaviour involving quick decision- making and tendency for immediate acquisition of the product. Beatty & Ferrell (1998) partly agree with this definition and formulate impulse buying as that it refers to immediate purchases which are without any pre-shopping objective, like for example, fulfilling a specific need. As we cruise through the definitions it becomes clear that most researchers point out that impulse buying stems from the difference in the
deliberation of the buying process. Bayley & Nancarrow’s (1998) view on impulse buying is in line with this thought. They state that impulse buying is a “sudden, compelling, hedonically complex buying behaviour, in which the rapidity of an impulse decision process precludes thoughtful and deliberate consideration of other choices”. They find support in the
definition formulated by Block & Morwitz (1999) as they also formulate impulse buying as; consumers that buy an item with almost no deliberation after the result of a sudden, powerful urge.
Most of these definitions stem from one of the first articles on impulse buying. This is the article written by Stern in the Journal of Marketing in 1962. In this article Stern (1962) categorizes impulse buying in four different types. This paper recognizes the importance of Stern’s research and it is therefore that it will pay more attention to this framework of the four different types of impulse buying.
The first type is ‘pure impulse buying’. Stern (1962) categorizes this type of impulse buying as the most easily distinguishable kind. Pure impulse buying is the actual ‘escape’ purchase that truly breaks a normal buying pattern. Although this kind is the most
distinguishable, it also accounts for the smallest number of purchases. This is because, for example, typical housewives rely on habit and are therefore more efficient shoppers thus eliminating impulsiveness from shopping (Stern, 1962).
The second type of impulse buying is ‘reminder impulse buying’. The main idea here is that a prior knowledge or an experience with the product is remembered. This prior experience or knowledge of the product ‘sparks’ the impulse purchase resulting in a decision to buy (Stern, 1962). Reminder impulse buying for example occurs when as shopper sees an item and recalls an advertisement, remembers that the stock at home is low or remembers another previous buying decision.
‘suggestion impulse buying’ is the third type of impulse buy explained by Stern (1962). This type of impulse buying differs from “reminder impulse buying’ because in this type there is no previous knowledge of the product. As the shopper encounters the product for the first time the shopper visualizes a need for the products based on the quality,
function and the like of the product (Stern, 1962). It differs from ‘pure impulse buying’ in the way that ‘suggestion impulse buying’ can be purely rational or functional whereas ‘pure impulse buying’ evokes emotions which spark the pure impulse purchase.
The fourth and last type is the ‘planned impulse buy’. This may sound contradictory but in fact it is not. In this type of impulse buying the customer enters the store with a specific purchase in mind but intends to let the final decision depend on price specials or coupon offers (Stern, 1962).
B. External factors of impulse buying
External factors of impulse buying are seen as marketing cues or stimuli that are placed and controlled by the marketer in attempt to lure consumers into purchase decisions (Youn & Faber, 2000). Examples of external stimuli are the store environment and the marketing environment. The store environment can be seen as the internal and external physical surroundings of the store. This includes many elements such as the layout, design, lighting, music, directional signage and human elements (Lam, 2001). The marketing environment consist of all sales and promotional activities (Piron, 1991).
C. Store layout
bottom of the list when customers are asked to state its relative importance compared to other variables (Donovan et al. 1994). It is therefore that we won’t pay a lot of attention to this variable. We will however focus on store layout. Store Layout refers to the way in which products, aisles and other interior designs are arranged (Baker, Parasuraman, Grewal, & Voss, 2002). At first glance the size and shape are important, but what actually matters is the partial relationship among them. Previous research papers by Baker et al. (2002), Chang,
Eckman & Yan, (2011) and Lam (2001) have investigated the importance of the store layout on impulse buying behaviour, proving the importance of understanding this relation.
D. Promotion
In this research the marketing environment is specified to a firm’s promotional activities. According to Syahrivar (2017), a firm uses promotion whenever marketers want to boost sales through short-term incentives which should result in a consumer purchase later on. A promotional approach is most of the times something like a free sample or a limited price package but stores also use winning contests as forms of promotion (Williams et al. 2012). It is important to understand what the effects of promotion are on purchase behaviour and why people respond to sales promotions. Most analytic and econometric models of sales promotion assume that saving money is the only motivator for customers (Blattberg & Allenby, 2010). There are other reasons why customers engage in promotional offers. This research will for example, try to find out if internal cues are connected to promotion and therefore to purchase decisions.
E. Internal Factors of impulse buying
The generally accepted term for a rational buyer is called the ‘Homo Economicus’. The ‘Homo Ecnomicus’ buys products on the basis of an evaluation of cost and benefits (Doucouliagos, 1994). Even though most people claim to buy their products with well thought intention, most people are much less rational in their purchase behaviour (Verplanken & Herabadi, 2001). Purchase behaviour most of the times doesn’t rely on rationality, but on internal cues. Internal cues refer to consumers’ self-feelings, moods, and emotional states (Youn & Faber, (2000)). According to Rook & Gardner (1993) emotions and or affective states are being regarded as potent triggers for impulse buying. For example, Rook & Garder speculate that impulsive buyers are more sensitive to their own personal
emotions. It is therefore interesting to investigate what personality traits are most receptible to external factors and thus maybe the most correlated with impulse buying.
F. Big five personality traits
In this research I will use the five-factor model which is also known as the ‘Big five of personality traits’. The five-factor model is based on five basic dimensions: extraversion, agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and openness to experience (McCrae & John 1992).
These 5 factors are regarded as the most important personality traits. It is therefore that this research will focus on the ‘big five’. The 5 personality traits are going to be a big part of this research. Understanding the five-factor model is important, so in this part we will pay extra attention to the 5 personality traits.
There are two major approaches based on personality trait theory. The first approach consists of a 3-factor model. This is called the Eysenck personality questionnaire (Eysenck, 1965). The second approach is more widely used. This approach is also called the NEO-personality inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Another name for the NEO-NEO-personality inventory is the five-factor model. To be clear, this is the model that we will use in this research. The main idea is that the five personality traits are used to study and classify personal behaviour.
The personality trait ‘Extraversion’ describes how social or outgoing a person is. ‘Agreeableness’ measures how compassionate or cooperative someone is,
‘Conscientiousness’ measures how organized and thoughtful someone is, ‘Neuroticism’ measures the emotional stability and the trait ‘Openness to experience’ looks at how open to ideas or new things someone is.
III. Hypotheses and research purpose A. Research purpose and design
In a paper written by Chang et. al, (2011) the authors argue that customers who had positive emotional responses to the store environment were more likely to make impulse buying decisions. In the broad sense of the word this is what will be investigated in this paper. A goal of the research will be to figure out what personality trait (internal factor) is the most susceptible to the external factors of store layout and promotion. I also intend to further develop the connection between the internal and external factors so that it becomes clear in what way this external factor(s) can contribute to impulse buying.
B. Questionnaire Design
The questionnaire can be seen as if it has two parts.
Through a couple of personal questions we will try to establish a Relationship between impulse Buying Tendency and Personality Traits. This research hypothesizes that personality traits have a positive effect on impulse buying. (This is the first part)
Hypothesis 1: Personality traits positively influence impulse buying
After that we will ask some specific questions about store layout and promotion. From these questions we will try to find a relation between personality traits and external factors. Just like in hypothesis 1, I also expect that personality traits are positively correlated to their respondence to external factors. It is therefore that I hypothesize that personality traits positively influence how susceptible people are to external factors. (This can be seen as the second part)
Hypothesis 2: Personality traits positively influence how susceptible people are to external factors
As the data from the two parts comes in, I hope to find interesting outcomes which will allow this research to formulate conclusions about the connection between impulse buys and external factors, which ultimately may be connected to a person’s personality.
-A potential finding may be: extravert people are more susceptible to external factors which also made them more likely to make impulse buys.
-Another potential finding may be: Conscious people are less affected by external factors so these factors don’t influence their impulse buying decisions.
-An alternative finding may be: People who are more open to experience are more susceptible to external factors but don’t seem to make more impulse buys.
To sum this all up; besides the influence of personality traits on external factors, it is also interesting to see if personality traits have an influence on impulse buying. There has been some research into the effect of external factors on impulse buying. This research however intends to combine the factors of personality traits and external factors to see whether they can have a combined effect on impulse buying. It is however possible that they both have an effect on impulse buying apart from each other. With these remarks in mind I expect that personality traits influence impulse buying directly and indirectly through external factors. This is shown in figure 1.
IV. Research method A. Procedure
So, in order to be able to say something about impulse buying I made use of a survey. The survey consisted of 26 questions in total. The first 6 questions were designed to be able to categorize the different types of respondents. The remaining 20 questions were more specific and were intended to yield specific data regarding impulse buying.
Through the use of ‘Qualtrics’ the survey design was adopted which easily allowed the collection of the empirical data. The data was collected via an online survey that I send to friends and family. Also, in order to get more respondents, I asked random people on the street to fill out the questionnaire on my phone. After the data collection I transferred the data set into SPSS which allowed for checking the statistical significance.
B. Measurement
As mentioned before the questionnaire contains two sections. The first questions are designed to classify the respondent by their personality traits. For example, after the first 5 questions the respondents could be grouped as either extrovert or introvert. For the personality trait ‘agreeableness’ I am going to group the respondents as either cooperative or competitive. In this research cooperative means that a respondent is more agreeable and competitive means that a respondent is less agreeable. This is the same for the personality trait ‘Consciousness’. Here, the level of consciousness is measured on how structured or organised people are. Well-structured people are high in the personality trait Consciousness and chaotic/disorganised people are considered to be lower in consciousness.
For the personality traits ‘Neuroticism’ and ‘Openness to experience’ I asked a question that was measured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from negative to positive. To make it more clear for the research I remodelled these scale results to nominal results. From then on the respondents were classified as either negative in their personality trait (strongly disagree, disagree and neither disagree nor agree) which was noted as a “1” or positive (agree and strongly agree) which was noted as a “2”.
For each one of the personality traits I only formulate one question. Based on this question I will either place them as high or low in the personality trait. I only asked one trait-specific question because I was, just like Paulhus & Bruce in 1992, afraid that the survey would be to excessive and people would prematurely quit the survey.
The questions that followed after the personality questions were designed to gain more general impulse buying information. These questions were measured either on a Likert scale basis or on a nominal basis.
C. Statistical Analyses
In this research I intend to find statistical significant differences for the personality traits. With the help of the statistical program SPSS, I performed Chi-square tests to examine associations between a personality trait and whether the personality trait could be reason for impulse buying tendency. For all the Chi square test the focus lies on comparing 1 personality trait to the outcomes. So, the answers from the people high in the personality trait and the answers from the people low in the personality trait are compared to each other. The statistical analyses were conducted with a significance level of .05 and were 2-sided.
D. Sample
51 people participated in the survey. 45 of the 51 respondents were between the age of 18 and 30. The remaining 6 were over the age of 30. About 75% of the respondents said they mostly shop for themselves or for (student)housemates. From the remaining 13 people (25%), 7 people always shop for their family and 6 always just for themselves.
2 people claimed they never bought on impulse before, but later questions revealed they actually did. Therefore, this study will add these 2 people to the other 49 which claimed to have bought on impulse before.
Interestingly, when presented the following statement; “I always come completely prepared to the supermarket” 10 people answered ‘strongly disagree’, 20 ‘disagree’ and 13 people were indifferent. This shows that 84,3 percent of the respondents basically walk into the supermarket and will only then decide what to buy. Suggesting once again that the market for impulse buys is a market full of opportunities.
Moreover, in order to get a clear view of what the average respondent intends to buy at a store, I presented the following statement; ‘I prefer to buy my products as cheap as possible’. It seems that most people come to the supermarket indeed with the intention to
buy the cheapest products. This suggest that most people might be susceptible for price offers which is linked to the promotional approach. It could, on the other hand, also be a negative signal. Provided that for example seasonal products are more expensive, it could mean that these products won’t be touched because of budget restraints, thus decreasing impulse buys.
V. Results
A. Impulse buying results.
The research will first focus on the more general impulse-buying related questions. As the first part of the survey was designed to present more general findings these are presented here first. The more general findings include results concerning the different types of impulse buys, store layout and store environment and lastly a bit about a store-layout /promotion combination.
Research by Stern (1962)
In the theoretical framework I pointed out that the paper written by Stern (1962) was going to be regarded as a foundation for the definition of impulse buying. I decided
however, that it would be interesting to see which of the four different types of impulse buys was most common for the valid 50 answers. As Stern (1962) pointed out, the “pure impulse buy” would in theory be the least common since efficient shoppers, like housewives, would rely on habit thus eliminating impulsiveness. Only 6 of the respondents were over 30 which means that the other 45 were students. Given the fact that there are 45 students, I expect the average respondent to be more impulsive, which I ultimately expect to result in more ‘pure impulse buys’.
As expected 35 chose the ‘pure impulse buy’, 14 the ‘reminder impulse buy’ and only 1 the ‘planned impulse buy’. I also checked for significant differences between all five of the personality traits but nothing significant was found.
The planned impulse buy
Although it was expected, I did feel the need to formulate another question which would focus more on the ‘planned impulse buy’. Since the ‘planned impulse buy’ sounds so contra dictional I tried to come up with a statement which would make sense to everyone. I formulated the statement as follows ‘I always know what product I am shopping for, but I let
the final brand decision depend on promotions’.
After consulting the previous table it becomes clear that about 60 percent of the people agrees or even strongly agrees with the statement. It therefore seems that a lot of the respondents, consciously or not, are engaging in planned impulse buys.
The next step in this process was to look at the 5 different personality traits and if one of the 5 traits significantly impacted the results. In order to check if there was a significant difference between introvert and extrovert people this research made use of a crosstab comparison and Chi- square Test in SPSS statistics. Whenever a Chi-square test resulted in a significance below 0,05 it was reason to believe that this personality trait caused differences. This was done for all 5 of the personality traits which in the end resulted in 4 insignificant results and 1 significant. It appears that the personality trait
‘Agreeableness’ significantly impacts the way people engage in planned impulse buys (table 1. in appendix).
Store layout & promotion
In question 20 and 21 I tried to investigate whether a promotional ‘shelf’ or ‘installation’ could persuade customers enough to break their normal buying pattern. The two questions are linked to each other in the way that 21 is a follow up question of 20. The respondents are presented an example of a promotional installation in the Albert Heijn and are asked if they have ever bought something from an installation like this. The follow up question tried to find out if the position of this installation made the difference in buying the product.
Q20.
Q21.
General descriptive statistics showed that 24 responded that they have bought something from a promotional installation like in the situation but 27 responded negatively. When asked the question ‘would you also have bought this product if this installation was located in a corner of the store?’, 44 answered no and 7 answered yes. This suggest that for about 17 people the position of the shelf/installation makes a big difference in the buying-process. As this research is not solely focused on describing the outcomes, it also tries to find a statistical relation between the personality traits and the given answers. With the help of the Chi-square tests in SPSS I tried to find out if one of the traits has a statistical significant relationship to question 20.
From the results it turned out that the only one of the five is statistically relevant. Since the Asymptotic Significance p-value of 0,049 is just below 0,05 it is proven that the personality trait agreeableness is associated with buying from a promotional installation as provided in the example (table 2. in appendix). Although 44 people replied not to have bought the product if the installation was placed in the corner, we cannot really move forward with this question. This is because 27 claim never to be persuaded by an installation
can be regarded as significant. So, there is no association between the personality traits and the placement of the promotional installation.
Store layout and environment
The external factor of store layout could potentially be a cause for more impulse buys. We have just seen that the positioning of certain promotional products for about 17 people (a third) is critical in the buying process and we have also seen that this is especially important for people that are either high or low in the personality trait agreeableness. To gain even more information in this external factor I inquired the respondents in question 22 to shine their light on the statement; ‘The general store layout is important” Q22.
86,3 percent of the respondents responded with either ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ highlighting the importance of a clearly and efficiently structured store. Further research into a significant relation between one of the personality traits and the responses to this statement yielded nothing and no association was found.
The store environment focusses more on things like smells, music or the lighting in stores. Since this is associated with the store layout I decided to check if the respondents actively
experience the store environment. These results turned out to be not so interesting as 13 people were indifferent and the other responses were somewhat divided evenly. Chi-square test also turned out to be insignificant.
It is however interesting to see how the respondents reacted to question 24. Almost 88 percent either agrees or strongly agrees with the statement; “a good-looking store contributes to more sales”. Although (or maybe since) most people agree with the statement, no association between the variables was found.
B. Case specific results
In this part of the research we will continue to analyse the results of the
questionnaire. It is different however from the previous part because the questions here are designed to present more specific situations. In these situations I hope to find interesting answers and differences in personality bounded answers.
‘Last minute buying situation’
In a lot of stores and supermarkets customers are faced with the opportunity to buy products during their check-out process. Marketeers are thoughtfully placing products right next to the counter. Those products are placed exactly there with the intention of luring the customers into buying on the spot. This kind of ‘on-the-spot’ purchasing is an example of impulse buying that is interesting to investigate. So, for question 15 the questionnaire formulates the question; ‘have you ever bought something, last minute, during the payment process’. It turns out that 21 answered: ‘sometimes’, 11 answered ‘never’ and 19 answered ‘maybe once but practically never’. The interesting part comes when I statistically tested if
significance (table 3. in appendix). This P-value of 0,030 is below the chosen significance of 0,05, hence this is reason to believe that the character trait Extraversion is a significant determinant of the given answers.
For the other 4 personality traits there was no significant P value, and therefore no association between these traits and the given answers is found.
‘Avocado promotion situation’
In this question (Q. 18) the respondents are confronted with a situation where they have to choose between buying one or two avocados. The question describes the situation where the shopper only needs 1 avocado but gets confronted with a special offer to get the second avocado for half the price. This research intends to investigate whether the
promotion influences the customers enough to abandon their normal, estimated, buying pattern and switch from 1 to 2 avocado’s.
From the table it becomes clear that 1 of the respondents skipped question 18. It is
therefore that for this question there are only 50 valid answers. From the 50 valid answers 35 agreed to switch from buying 1 to 2 avocados. The other 15 decided to not to accept the promotion offer and still buy 1 avocado.
As this research has done before, it again will try to link one of the personality traits to the given answers. With the help of the Chi square test we will test for a relationship. Since the p-value for all 5 of the personality traits is greater than the chosen significance level (α = 0.05), we conclude that there is not enough evidence to suggest an association between personality traits and the decision to deviate from the original buying pattern.
‘bread promotion situation’
Similar to question 18 the questionnaire presents the respondents another situation with a promotional offer. The supermarket in this situation tries to persuade the customers
into buying 2 loafs of white bread instead of 1 loaf of brown. Additionally, the question also states the hypothetical situation where the customers likes brown bread better than white. Knowing this, the respondent is asked if the promotion deal is enough reason to switch to white bread.
From the results It appears that about 75 percent responded not to accept the promotional offer and decided to stick with the bread that they came for in the first place. 13 people, who account for the other 25 percent, responded positively to the offer and were persuaded into buying something on impulse.
A relationship between the personality traits and the answers is tested but only the personality trait Conscientiousness with a p value of 0,084 comes close to being significant. It is however not smaller than the chosen significance level of 0,05 so no association is concluded. This also counts for the other 4 personality traits who, all in their own turn, also have insignificant p values.
‘MacDonald’s self-service situation’
In order to see if not only promotion causes more impulse buys I decided to dig deeper and look for possible other influencers. Store layout is much more than just
designing the most efficient shopping path (Baker et al. 2002). A part of store layout is the appeal of the store and trying to lure as many customers in to buying your products (Chang et al. 2011). In the next question the fast-food restaurant Macdonald’s in the ‘Kalverstraat” in Amsterdam is examined.
customers. This store tries to boost their sales and attract more customers via their self-order stations near the entrance. These stations are designed to lower the barrier of
ordering since they are easy and quick to use.
In question 25 the respondents are presented with a picture of the self-order station within the Kalverstraat restaurant and are also presented the following statement:
‘the Macdonalds self-order stations make me decide, even though the normal counter has a big cue, to order at MacDonald’s. The results of the question 25 are as follows.
From the table it seems that 27 of the 51 people agree or even strongly agree with the statement. 14 people are indifferent and 10 don’t agree or even strongly agree with the statement. Since over 50 percent of the respondents positively respond to the self-order stations it might be reason to believe that MacDonald’s succeeds in attracting more customers on the spot.
Unfortunately, for this question it seems that none of the Chi-square test came back with significant p values. It is therefore that for this question one might conclude that there is no connection between the personality traits and the outcomes.
‘Hema food corner situation’
In the last question the respondents are once more confronted with a store layout situation. In question 26 we take a look at the HEMA-concern. Next to clothes and all kinds of other stuff the HEMA also has a food-corner/restaurant. These food corners are placed by HEMA very consciously at the front of their shops. They do this not only to attract people from in the stores, but they also do this to attract people from outside to enter the store and have something to eat.
also briefed that these food corners used to be in the back of the store but are recently moved to the front. After this they were asked to react to the following statement;
‘If this food corner was located in the back of the store, I probably wouldn’t have bought something to eat’. The reactions to this statement will reveal if the respondents decide that the location off the food corner makes a difference in the buying decision.
The next table shows that 22 respondents agree and 8 respondents strongly agree. Compared to the 14 indifferent and 7 ‘disagree’ reactions it appears that nearly 60 percent of the people finds the location of the food corner important enough to enter the store or not.
In the end of 2017 they even updated their concept again starting in a store in Tilburg. This proves that the importance of a well thought store layout and marketing plan is still relevant (Tilburg.com, 2017).
The reactions provide positive signals towards impulse buying behaviour. For the last time we will check whether one of the personality traits has a significant relation to the results. After testing in SPSS with Chi-square tests the relationships turned out to be insignificant. Only Neuroticism came a bit close, but a p value of 0,158 is definitely not enough reason to associate this personality trait with the results.
VI. Discussion and Conclusions
In this part of the paper I will take a final look at the results and I will formulate, where possible, conclusions. I will not approach this in the same way as I did for the results. There I started discussing the more general findings of the survey. Which included for example ‘the planned impulse buy’, ‘promotional effectivity’, store layout and store environment. After that I focussed more on the case specific results. These included the results of ‘last minute buying’ situation, the 2 promotional situations and the 2 store-layout situations.
In this part I will try to gather all my findings, general or case specific, and will try to accept or reject the hypotheses.
The first thing that I wanted to do was focus on the connection between personality traits and impulse buying behaviour. I started this in the beginning of the survey by asking about the 4 types of impulse buys. It appeared that 35 acknowledged that they were most
common with the pure impulse buy. This is also the most distinguishable impulse buy since it relies on a pure ‘sudden craving’ for the product. The planned impulse buy however, is not so common for most people.
60 percent of the people admits to making their final decision in the store based on the cheapest brand. I can therefore conclude that a lot of the respondents, consciously or not, are engaging in planned impulse buys. Moreover, a specific personality trait has a significant relation to planned impulse buys. Stemming from a Chi-square test, the P-value of 0,021 < 0,05, it is therefore concluded that the personality trait ‘Agreeableness’ significantly impacts the way people engage in planned impulse buys.
Also, this might be a reason for accepting hypothesis 1 since a personality trait is connected to a form of impulse buying.
Secondly, to test hypothesis 1 even more I will review the results of the last-minute buying situation. Resulting from question 15 it turned out that 21 people admit to
sometimes buying products during check-out. It is nice for marketeers to conclude that a bit less than 50 percent of my respondents is engaging in last minute impulse buying. But, it is more interesting to see that the personality trait extraversion is associated with last minute impulse buying. As a 0,030 asymptotic significance is below the chosen significance of 0,05 there is enough reason to believe and conclude that the personality trait extraversion
significantly impacts last minute buying behaviour. This could mean there is another reason to accept hypothesis 1.
Even though this research found 2 examples were the personality traits were associated with impulse buying, it is difficult to accept nor reject the hypothesis. This is because of the fact that in both cases only 1 of the 5 personality traits was significant. What can be accepted is the following; the personality traits Agreeableness and Extraversion are in this research proven to be linked to impulse buying.
In order to answer hypothesis 2 we will check if personality traits are connected to external factors causing impulse buys. The external factors store layout and promotion are the factors that in theory should drive people into making impulse buys. For the second hypothesis I expect that personality traits influence the susceptibility to external factors.
The external factor store layout will be discussed first.
The importance of the general store layout is stressed in question 22. From the results it appeared that 86,3 percent either agrees or even strongly agrees with the importance of an efficiently structured store. In question 24 almost 88 percent agrees or strongly agrees that a good-looking store contributes to more sales. So, we can conclude that store layout is important, but is it also more important for a specific personality trait? Further research into a significant relation between one of the personality traits and the responses to question 22 and 24 yielded nothing and no association was found. Thus, we conclude that store layout is not more important for one of the personality traits.
This is also the case for the store environment. Less than half of the respondents replied in question 23 that they care about the store environment. This is not really interesting, and the fact that there is also no significance found for any of the personality traits, makes me conclude that the store environment is not linked to impulse buying. After the respondents were presented a specific situation like the one at McDonalds we found that over 50 percent agreed that the placement of self-order stations is something that could cause them to impulsively decide to buy at McDonalds. Therefore, we conclude
relevant.
The last example was the food corner of the HEMA store. As nearly 60 percent of the people find the location of the food corner important enough to enter the store, we can conclude that the store layout is important. However, the relationship between personality trait and this specific store layout situation turned out to be insignificant. Only Neuroticism came a bit close, but a p value of 0,158 is definitely not enough reason to conclude that a personality trait is associated with the results.
The second external factor of promotion will be discussed here.
With the use of 3 situations the effect of promotion is tested. The first test was in question 18 where a promotional offer was designed to lure customers into buying two products instead of one. 35 people agreed to switch from buying 1 to 2 avocados. Because 70% decided to change their original buying pattern I conclude that promotion has an effect on impulse buying. However, Since the p-value for all 5 of the personality traits is greater than the chosen significance level (α = 0.05), we conclude that there is not enough evidence to establish an association between personality traits and the decision to deviate from the original buying pattern.
The second promotional situation that was tested in question 19. For this situation only 25 percent of the people accepted the offer. It is therefore that I conclude here that this promotion has a low effect on impulse buying. A relationship between the personality traits and the answers is tested but only the personality trait Conscientiousness with a p value of 0,084 comes close to being significant. It is however not smaller than the chosen significance level of 0,05 so no association is concluded. This also counts for the other 4 personality traits who, all in their own turn, also have insignificant p values.
The third situation is a mix of store layout and promotion. By placing a promotional product in the middle of an aisle the supermarket tried to persuade customers into buying the product impulsively. Answers from question 20 showed that 24 responded that they have bought something from a promotional installation like in the situation. A bit less than half of respondents, but still a sign that this combination of promotion and store layout is positively associated to impulse buying. Moreover, when tested, the Asymptotic Significant p-value of 0,049 is just below the chosen significance of 0,05. So, I conclude that it is proven that the personality trait agreeableness is associated with buying from a promotional
installation as provided in the example.
After combining all the conclusions about promotion and store layout, I ultimately conclude that external factors play a big part in impulse buying, but the personality traits don’t seem to have a significant impact on this relation.
I therefore conclude that hypothesis 2 which was; ‘personality traits influence how susceptible people are to external factors’ cannot be accepted.
A. Summary of conclusions
From the survey it appeared that there was reason to accept hypotheses 1. Chi-square test revealed that some personality traits are linked to impulse buying. The personality traits in this case were Agreeableness and Extraversion. The other personality traits however did not appear to be significant. Therefore, the final conclusion is that 2 personality traits positively influence impulse buying. But, in order to fully accept the hypothesize more proof is
required. Thus, the hypothesis will be partly accepted.
In order to accept hypothesis 2 this research needed prove that personality traits are connected to the level of response concerning external impulse buying factors. Store layout was tested first. From question 22 it appeared that 86,3 percent either agrees or even strongly agrees with the importance of an efficiently structured store. In question 24 almost 88 percent agrees or strongly agrees that a good-looking store contributes to more sales. So, store layout is important. Moreover, for the specific situation of McDonalds and HEMA it appeared that the answers for both situations were evidence off effective external factors. However, it is also concluded that, for neither the more general store layout nor the specific situations, personality traits are associated to the results.
Lastly, promotion. For the first situation successful promotion was concluded since 70 percent admitted to buying an additional product. For the second situation only a quarter accepted the promotion so this promotion was concluded to have low impact. Results from both situations were not bound to personality traits because of high p-values. Only the third situation had some significant result. It showed that about half of the responses were
The importance of external factors is undisputed, but there was hardly any evidence that certain personality traits are more susceptible to external factors. Therefore hypothesis 2 is not accepted.
VII. Limitations and future research
In my opinion, the best way to measure the impulse buying tendency is to conduct a survey inside a supermarket and maybe even better, actually during the purchase phase. This research however made use of a survey that described multiple situations that the respondents afterwards responded to.
Also, the number of respondents was 50, which I consider to be rather low. In order to make future research more reliable I would obligate myself to obtain more than a hundred respondents. The respondents that replied were mostly from my known network and friends on Facebook.
There are probably many other factors (for example, mood, demographics, available time, money etc) that influence impulse buying. These factors are not accounted for in this research thus leaving a gap for future research. Now that we are talking about research gaps, only 6 of my respondents were over the age of 30. In a future research, that has more respondents over the age of 30, there is an opportunity to research if the variable age has significant impact on impulse buying.
In the ‘measurement’ part of the thesis I explained that the personality traits of ‘openness to experiences’ and ‘neuroticism’ (stress) were first measured on a 5-point Likert scale. This was actually not the most appropriate for the research so I modified this scale variable to a nominal variable. Limiting here is that from the 5 different scales I grouped; (1-3) ‘strongly disagree’, ‘disagree’, and ‘neither disagree nor agree’ as negative answers and grouped (4-5) ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’ as positive answers. This was necessary for the research, but I recognize that the for some given answers this might not be appropriate.
Furthermore, in my research I intended to measure all 5 personality traits. To prevent respondents from filling out a survey that was way too long and boring I decided that I was not going to ask multiple personal questions specified for one personality trait. Instead of doing this I kept it rather simple. I grouped the people as either high or low in the
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Appendix.
Table 1.Crosstable and chi square test for personality trait “agreeableness’ vs. planned impulse buy (Q. 12 ).
Table 2.
Crosstable and chi square test for personality trait’ agreeableness’ vs. Promotional installation (Q. 20 ).
Table 3.
Crosstable and chi square test for personality trait “extraversion” vs Last minute purchases (Q. 15 ).
Survey
Impulse buying
Start of Block: Default Question Block Q1 Hoe oud ben je?
o
18-30 (1)o
30+ (2)Q2 Zie je jezelf meer als een introvert of een extrovert persoon?
o
introvert (1)o
Extrovert (2)Q4 Ik sta open voor nieuwe experiences.
o
strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)o
Strongly agree (5) Q5 Zie je jezelf meer als.Q6 Zie je jezelf meer als.
o
Erg gestructureerd en goed georganiseerd. (1)o
Een beetje chaotisch en ongestructureerd. (2) Q7 Ik kan goed omgaan met stress.o
Strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)o
Strongly agree (5)Q8 Als je naar de supermarkt gaat, voor wie koop je dan producten?
o
Altijd alleen voor mijzelf (1)o
Voor mijn familie (2)o
Soms voor mijzelf en soms voor huisgenoten (3) Q9 Ik kom altijd volledig voorbereid naar de supermarkt.o
Strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)Q10 Heb je wel is een impulsaankoop gedaan?
o
Yes (1)o
No (2)Q11 Hoe vaak komt dit voor?
o
Bijna nooit (1)o
Soms (2)o
Geen idee (3)Q12 Waarom kocht je dit product op impuls?
o
Op dat moment wilde ik het gewoon hebben. (1)o
Omdat een ander product aanraadde dat het een goede toevoeging zou zijn. (2)o
Ik herinnerde mij dat ik het product niet meer in huis had. (3)o
Ik wist al wat ik ging kopen, maar het merk van het product wilde ik pas in de winkel bepalen. (4)Q13 Heb je wel is een product gekocht dat je voor het eerst zag en dacht ‘ dit wil ik wel is proberen’?
o
Ja (1)Q14 Ik koop het liefst mijn producten zo goedkoop mogelijk.
o
Strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)o
Strongly agree (5) Q15Heb je wel is tijdens het afrekenen last-minute nog iets gekocht?
o
Ja soms (1)o
Nooit (2)o
Misschien 1 keer gedaan maar eigenlijk niet (3)Q16 Ik weet vaak welk product ik wil kopen maar laat het afhangen van aanbiedingen welk merk ik koop.
o
Strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)Q17 Koop je wel is een kratje bier? Zo ja, koop je dan altijd wat er in de aanbieding is?
o
Ja altijd aanbieding. (1)o
Ja altijd aanbieding, behalve als het niet lekker bier is. (2)o
Ja maar ik koop altijd een specifiek merk. (3)o
Nee ik koop nooit bier. (4)Q18 Je hebt maar 1 avocado nodig, maar je ziet dat de 2e avocado voor de halve prijs is. Wat doe je?
o
Ik koop alsnog 1 avocado (1)o
Ik koop de 2e ook (want het is toch de halve prijs en hij zal later nog wel van pas komen). (2)Q19
Je houdt meer van bruin dan van wit brood. Wat doe je?
o
Koop 1 bruin brood voor 0,99 cent. (1)o
Koop 2 witte tijgerbroden voor 0,99 cent. (2) Q20Heb je wel is iets gekocht uit een promotioneel schap zoals deze hier op de foto ( geplaatst in het midden van de gang)
o
Ja (1)Q21 Denk je dat je dit ook had gekocht als het in de hoek van de winkel had gestaan?
o
Ja (1)o
Nee (2)Q22 Het is belangrijk hoe een winkel is ingedeeld.
o
Strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)o
Strongly agree (5)Q23 Ik ben wel is bezig met dingen in de winkel zoals geur, muziek of verlichting.
o
Strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)Q24
Een goed uitziende winkel draagt bij aan meer verkopen.
o
Strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)o
Strongly agree (5) Q25<stelling> De Macdonalds zelfservice apparaten zorgen ervoor dat ik, ondanks de lange rijen aan de normale balie, toch besluit om bij de Macdonalds te bestellen.
o
Strongly disagree (1)o
Disagree (2)o
Neither agree nor disagree (3)o
Agree (4)o
Strongly agree (5) Q26Hema heeft pas sinds een paar jaar hun foodcorner naast de ingang.
<stelling> Als de foodcorner aan het einde van de winkel was had ik er waarschijnlijk niks gekocht.
