Impulse purchases and regrets: experiencing
negative emotions for buying urges
Ana-Adela Dincea
August 2009
Impulse purchases and regrets: experiencing
negative emotions for buying urges
Master thesis
Author: Ana-Adela Dincea
Student number: 1830422
Date: August 2009
Faculty: Faculty of Economics and Business
Specialization: Business Administration, MSc Marketing Management
Supervisor 1: Dr. Debra Trampe
Supervisor 2: Dr. Jia Liu
Author’s Address: Winschoterdiep 46, 9723 AC Groningen
Phone: +31 641669090
Management summary
This paper studies the incidence of regrets for shoppers experiencing impulsive urges and investigates the paths of this negative emotion across shopping outcomes and in time. The main objective was that of proving that regret is a complex construct and that its occurrence for impulse buys is unlike the remorse for functional purchases described in previous studies. Another goal was that of discovering whether self-restraint on an urge could influence the result of a future buying impulse.
This study used a 2 by 2 between-participants design and a modified version of a classic impulse buying scenario (Rook & Fisher, 1995) to measure regret levels and potential mediators of temporal shifts. Data was collected in a two-week interval in July 2009, using web-based resources. The final sample was made up of 79 students.
The main finding reported is that, shortly after the retail outcome, impulsive urges generate higher regrets for scenarios when the desire is acted upon than for situations of self-refrain. However, the direction of these emotions is found to be reversed in the long-term, as inaction regrets decrease and action repentance grows. Individual buying impulsivity could not be found to be unmistakably related to this pattern. Nonetheless, some buyer considerations were confirmed to be partially linked to some dimensions of regret. The extent to which a consumer experiences regret was proven to be directly related to his/her generation of alternative scenarios. The more one considers different outcomes of the purchase, the greater he/she will start doubting the option made. Particularly when a product was bought spontaneously, engaging in alternative considerations will increase the repent experienced for having bought something for oneself. Additionally, regretting the possession of the product was uncovered to be related to the value placed on the good. Other buyer considerations could not be tested to mediate the level of regret for distinct shopping situations.
Preface
“L’appétit vient en mangeant”
I have never felt the old French proverb listed above to have such accuracy to it as I have during the completion of my master thesis. What started off as a simple curiosity has grown over the past six months into a personal fixation and a source of constant amazement. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Debra Trampe for seeing me off on my journey towards a better understanding of impulsivity and its “by-products”. Without her constant assistance, unconditional patience and relentless support I could not have found my way on such a thorny itinerary.
I am eternally grateful to my parents who made my dream of studying in the Netherlands possible. And for indulging my antics, with ceaseless love, I thank Gelu.
Adela Dincea
Contents 1. Introduction ... 7 1.1. Background ... 7 1.2. Problem statement ... 7 1.3. Research questions ... 9 1.4. Structure of paper ... 10 2. Literature review ... 12 2.1. Introduction ... 12
2.2. Impulse shopping and its motives ... 12
2.2.1. Product and store cues ... 12
2.2.2. Personality related variables... 13
2.2.3. Moods and self concept ... 14
2.3. Moderators of impulsivity in a consumer context... 15
2.4. Impulse buying and regrets ... 16
2.4.1. Dimensions of regret ... 16
2.4.2. Purchase outcomes and regrets... 17
2.4.3. Impulse shopping, regrets and psychological distance ... 18
2.4.4. Regrets and post-purchase considerations... 20
2.4.5. The transaction web and regrets ... 21
2.5. Research objectives ... 23
3. Methodology ... 24
3.1. Method and sample ... 24
3.2. Procedure... 24 3.3. Questionnaire design ... 25 3.3.1. Regret items... 25 3.3.2. Counterfactual items... 26 3.3.3. Justification items... 27 3.3.4. Ownership items... 27
3.3.5. Subsequent buying urge items... 27
3.3.6. Expected behavioral intentions items... 27
3.3.7. Buying impulsiveness scale... 27
4. Results ... 29
4.1. Descriptive analysis... 29
4.1.1. Regret scale ... 29
4.1.2. Counterfactual scale ... 30
4.1.3. Justification and ownership scales ... 31
4.1.4. Subsequent impulsive urge and expected behavioral intentions scales ... 31
4.1.5. Buying impulsiveness tendency scale ... 32
4.2. Preparation of data... 32
4.3. Test of hypotheses ... 33
4.3.1. Hypothesis H1a and H1b... 33
4.3.2. Hypotheses H2a, H2b and H2c ... 36
4.3.3. Hypothesis H3 ... 43
5. Conclusions and implications... 47
5.1. Conclusions ... 47
5.1.1. Introduction ... 47
5.1.2. The variance of regret in time and across outcomes ... 47
5.1.3. The relationships between regret and buyer considerations... 49
5.2. Limitations and further research... 50
5.3. Implications ... 51
References ... 53
1. Introduction
1.1. Background
As the range of goods sold increases exponentially from year to year and with the constant introduction of new spending alternatives, it is no wonder impulsivity has earned the spotlight in consumer behaviour research. Considered irrational by early studies, but examined and embraced by more recent ones, impulse buying is no longer treated as a deviation from the principles of economic theory. Instead it has become a crucial point of interest for marketers and psychologists alike.
Impulse shopping involves getting a sudden urge to buy something, without advance intention or plan (Baumeister, 2002), and is described by researchers as a transaction that unfolds immediately after the shopper has spotted the article (Hoch and Lowenstein, 1991). Such situations are most often difficult to resist, as they involve anticipated pleasurable experiences and little regard is given to the consequences of the action (Rook, 1987). However, a number of different factors have been found to influence whether an impulse is acted on or discarded. These factors range from a consumer’s economic position to social visibility (Rook and Fisher, 1995) to the shopper’s mood at the time of transaction (Rook and Gardner, 1993 in Kacen and Lee, 2002), from the perceived hedonic benefit of the product to the buyer’s impulsivity tendency (Verplaken and Herabadi, 2001); any of the factors may intervene and either encourage or interrupt the transaction from happening.
Up to now, central to impulse buying research have been the product or environment specific predictors that trigger a spontaneous purchase (Rook and Fisher, 2005, Peck and Childers, 2006, Jones et al, 2003) and the consumer’s innate personality characteristics (Verplanken and Herabadi, 2001). Novel findings include those which link impulsivity to emotional states (Rook and Gardner, 1993, Ditmar et al, 1996) and which try to explain the impact of certain moderator variables, such as the level of self-regulatory resources the consumer disposes of (Vohs and Faber, 2007). However, scarce studies have focused on the connection between one impulse purchase to another or on the role that regret plays in supporting or deterring this type of behaviour. As some findings would have it, around 20% of all purchases are unplanned; the need arises, thus, to understand how consumers perceive the experience of sudden urges, what the after-effects of such shopping outcomes are, in terms of affective reactions, and whether these emotions should be harvested or dealt with preventively by marketers.
1.2. Problem statement
Without exception, regrets are a constant in the lives of all, at one point or another. One may regret failing to finish law school, missing a best friend’s wedding or opting not to bet on a winning football team. The consequences of such acts can prove to be life-changing and are highly tangible to those who experience them, but what could similarly be said about the relevance of regrets for something as trivial as a purchase outcome?
was greater than that of other negative emotions. Surprisingly even, their study concluded that regret is the single negative affect which is appreciated for its functional benefits, serving in approach as well as avoidance motives. Additionally, regret was found to be the most frequently mentioned emotion, other than love (Shimanoff, 1984 quoted in Patrick et al, 2003), implying it holds an important function for the great majority of people. How, then, can it impact a consumer’s behaviour, specifically in a decision made unreflectively and immediately?
The term “regret” is commonly used to express a sense of sorrow over a decision which is considered “wrong” in retrospect. It is understood as a cognitively determined negative emotion experienced when evaluating a situation in comparison to a dismissed alternative (Zeelenberg et al, 1998). The essence of these definitions is the clear coupling of regret with choice. Regret is specifically related to choice (Tsiros and Mittal, 2002), being a product of counterfactual inference (Saffrey et al., 2008), one which has a direct influence on the consumer’s evaluation of the outcome of a decision. On a very basic level, any impulse purchase is the result of a consumer’s choice: either to go ahead and follow the impulse or approach the matter cautiously and stick to the normal routine. Impulse buys, as a generator of emotional conflict (Rook, 1987), put consumers in the situation of opting between adhering to a desire or to external constraints (Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998). Such situations do quite often disturb the buyer’s emotional state of equilibrium and they can even affect the accuracy of the decision (Hausman, 2000).
The emotional quality of most impulse purchases would seem to be in contrast with the cognitive nature of regret, yet most accounts of impulse buys are often accompanied by expressions of guilt (Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998). The experience of regret after succumbing to an urge and buying an unplanned article has been found to take many forms, from regretting the money spent to regretting the emotional benefits derived from the product (Dittmar and Drury, 2000). Narratives from shoppers suggest that regret in impulse purchases could be a result of an internal conflict between “desire” and “ought”, a clash between rationale and emotion.
Much of what is known about regret currently has been studied in an action – inaction context (Zeelenberg et al., 1998, 2002, Inman and Zeelenberg, 2002, Cooke et al, 2002, Ritov and Baron, 1995), yet, to my knowledge, the impulsivity of the purchase has never been employed to explain the affective outcome of a purchase decision. Whether regrets are stronger for actions (changes in the status quo) or for inactions is a function of more than one variable. Traditionally, actions have been perceived as being more abnormal than inactions (Zeelenberg et al, 2002), thusly resulting in stronger emotional responses (Zeelenberg et al., 1998). Although in the short-run, inactions can be accompanied by more regret (Abendroth and Diehl, 2006), people have the tendency to expect more regret for bad effects of actions, than for bad effects of inactions; this phenomenon is known in psychology as the omission bias (Ritov and Baron, 1995).
1.3. Research questions
Prior research has suggested that a consumer could regret making a purchase too soon and missing out on subsequent opportunities (Cooke et al, 2002), however, this finding cannot be generalized to impulsive acts as they hold little in common with functional, planned expenses. This study proposes that resisting an impulse urge will cause greater regret on the short term than acting in line with it. This expected result is based on the inference that, in a typical impulse buying episode, the context of the shopping experience will be viewed as a limited opportunity which the buyer passes up on when he/she inhibits the urge. Moreover, given the hedonically complex nature of these impulses (Hausman, 2000), denying a purchase could cause the already instable emotional conflict to amplify on the short run. The sheer loss of ownership opportunity could be sufficient to cause regret (Abendroth and Diehl, 2006). (Simply put, as impulse shopping is an exception to normal, planned, cautious shopping so should the regret pattern that it generates be an exception to the omission bias). By contrast, in the long-run, regret should be felt stronger for action scenarios, as rationalization comes into play and the undistinguishable need that the product bought was supposed to satisfy is no longer present.
Research question 1: Do regrets vary for situations of giving in to an impulsive urge as opposed to refraining from an urge? If so, what is the temporal trajectory of regrets for the two conditions?
Research in the field of psychological distance would have it that temporal distance from past decisions increases the regret of inactions and decreases the regret of actions (Gilovich and Medvec, 1994, quoted in Eyal et al, 2004). The argumentation behind this line of reasoning is that pros for a certain behaviour (i.e. claims for actions) are construed at a superordinate level and will, thus, become more prominent over time; meanwhile, cons for a behavior (i.e. arguments in favour of restraining - inaction) become more salient as temporal distance from the action decreases. However, Eyal et al (2004) also recognize some boundary conditions for these effects, implying that they could be reversed and, therefore, pros would cease to be high-level features and cons would stop being low level features.
Research question 2: Do post-purchase considerations (in the form of counterfactual, justification and ownership thoughts) mediate the relationship between purchase outcomes and temporal dimension and regrets?
A third question addressed by this study is whether inaction as a result of an impulse will constitute an antecedent of a future impulse purchase for a similar (substitute) or for a distinct product. Given the psychological motivations that underlie an impulse buy – desire, treat, thrill (Dittmar and Drury, 2000) – it is expected that regrets brought on by inaction will make room for future impulse shopping episodes. If resisting the previous impulse is perceived by the consumer as a negative outcome, this could induce the tendency to act on a subsequent impulse opportunity (Zeelenberg et al, 2002).
Research question 3: Can regrets for an inaction outcome of an impulsive urge constitute antecedents for subsequent impulsive urges and consumer actions? Are there grounds to assume that a subsequent urge will be acted upon?
According to the Reflective Impulsive Model, an individual’s impulsive system works in the same manner as a simple memory system, one capable of storing enduring and nonpropositional representations of the typical properties of the environment (Strack et al, 2006). The consumer is, thus, assumed to go through an experiential mode of awareness that will trigger specific affective reactions when faced with a stimulus. The innate or learnt links that make up the impulsive system will ensure that particular stimuli will generally trigger a behavioural schema that is consistent with previous representations. Parraleling Strack et al’s (2006) bakery example, when a buyer anticipates sensations from a prior situation, I expect that the regretted inaction on an impulse urge will support approach behaviour in a subsequent similar episode. Faced with comparable stimuli and a related level of arousal, the associative cluster created for spontaneous shopping episodes will be activated when the next situation arises. Should the outcome of the previous situation be perceived as being negative (in terms of being regretted), the consumer may attempt to reverse the outcome the second time around. It is then expected that behavioural decisions could result from inferences and prior knowledge. The nature of the desired product/good is not presumed to be connected to the associative cluster, as impulse shopping is in opposition with goal-orientation. Furthermore, the product category was not found to be an antecedent of impulsivity in several previous studies (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998, Dholakia, 2000) and the limited results obtained for the product specific impulse buying tendency (Jones et al, 2003) cannot be generalized to more categories of goods (the categories under investigation were clothing and music).
1.4. Structure of paper
First, a closer inspection of the existing field literature will enable the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the analyzed concepts, while being introduced to the main hypotheses of the current study. Secondly, an overview of the methodology used will be presented. In the third section, the analysis employed is explained in detail and its results noted, with the paper ending with an outline of conclusions and managerial implications.
With this paper I hope to contribute to the literature on impulsive spending in an area that has drawn little interest up to now, but which merits attention for its utility in marketing and promotional activities alike: negative emotions of buyers – the when?, why? and to what
2. Literature review
2.1. Introduction
The consumer’s spontaneous behaviour in the retail environment has been under research for several decades now, with an array of different findings concerning motivations to shop, the influence of moods and personality and situational cues that encourage spending. Most researchers have settled on defining impulse shopping as “a buying action undertaken without a problem previously having been consciously recognized or a buying intention formed prior to entering the store” (Engel and Blackwell, 1982), with an emphasis on cataloguing this behaviour as “spontaneous, unreflective, immediate and kinetic” (Rook and Fisher, 1995). To distinguish this concept from an unplanned purchase, Verplanken and Herabadi (2001) have proposed that an impulse purchase embodies at least two core elements: the lack of deliberation concerning the purchase of a product accompanied by an emotional response. This follows in the direction suggested in earlier works that have highlighted the fact that impulse buying behaviour is always preceded by an urge – the intention to spontaneously spend for an item (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998), by an attraction to the object (Rook and Fisher, 1995) and by an emotional conflict between desire and willpower (Hoch and Lowenstein, 1991, Hausman, 2000).
2.2. Impulse shopping and its motives
The literature on this topic has uncovered various motives that lead to or encourage this form of behaviour. While some authors have investigated the product-specific nature of this tendency (Jones et al, 2003, Harmancioglu et al, 2009), others have focused on the symbolic consumption aspect of impulsiveness in the store (Dittmar et al. 2005), on personality traits (Verplanken and Herabadi, 2001), on hedonic desires (Hausman, 2000, Mick and Demoss, 1990), on situational factors (Kollat and Willett, 1967, Peck and Childers, 2006) or on the consumers’ cultural (group) characteristics (Kacen and Lee, 2008). A great importance has also been placed on moderating factors of impulsiveness traits, such as normative evaluations (Rook and Fisher, 1995), the presence of peers (Luo, 2005) and presence or depletion of self-regulatory resources (Vohs and Faber, 2007).
2.2.1. Product and store cues
touch’), can encourage impulsiveness in a consumer’s behaviour. The scenario advanced by these researchers is that, in decision-making tasks when processing resources are limited, affective reactions which are evoked spontaneously weigh heavier on the purchase decision than do cognitions. Knowing that shoppers high in autotelic NFT experience stronger affective reactions, Peck and Childers (2006) advised on increasing environmental salience of touch information, in order to trigger reactions from buyers. Music, lighting, store layout or merely signage that motivates the buyer to touch the product could affect a consumer’s decision process, motivating him/her to impulsively purchase the displayed good.
Store environment has long been identified as an impact factor on impulse purchases. Over-stimulating store environments (as perceived by the shopper when compared to his/her desired stimulation level) are more likely to influence impulse shopping (Mattila and Wirtz, 2008). It has been posited that a highly-stimulating store environment could increase the level of impulse purchases, as consumers’ self-regulations could be lessened by high arousal levels. Drawing from previous findings in psychology, Mattila and Wirtz (2008) ascertain that a highly stimulating shop setting “threatens” a person’s self-control, depleting him/her momentarily of the ability to refrain and increasing the vulnerability to act on impulsive urges. Moreover, social factors, in the form of employee assistance and other customers, must also be analyzed in deciding for a store-design. These factors could be jointly grouped under the notion of “a store’s attraction power” (Tauber, 1995). Dijskterhuis et al. (2005) also establish that the social environment surrounding the consumer can trigger the activation of unconscious goals through important others. The conclusion of their study was similar to past research in finding that behaviour is often the result of mere cues in the environment. Seeing other people purchase a jumbo-size pack of ice-cream could lead someone to pick one too from the aisle while the freshly cleaned supermarket floor could spawn an impulse to purchase some detergent, although the item had not been planned.
2.2.2. Personality related variables
Perhaps the bets known measure of buying impulsiveness is the one developed by Rook and Fisher (1995). Described by the authors as a “basic human trait”, buying impulsiveness is defined as a unidimensional construct that embodies consumers’ tendencies both to think and to act in identifiable and distinct ways. Unlike Jones et al. (2003), these authors do not link impulsivity with a specific product category, mentioning factors such as economic position, social visibility and time pressure as being predictors of behaviour. Rook and Fisher (1995) characterize shoppers high in buying impulsiveness as having a relatively unreflective thought process in the store environment and being unequivocally attracted to specific stimulating products. Their research into impulsive behaviour materialized into a buying impulsiveness scale, a theory-driven and validated measure of a consumer’s personality trait. To date, this is the most widely employed scale by researchers studying spontaneous purchases and it is the impulsivity measure of choice for this study as well.
In an original research on impulse buys for new product categories, Harmancioglu et al (2009) concluded that the main drivers of the sale of these goods are the knowledge consumers hold on those respective categories, in association with two consumer characteristics – excitement and esteem. An interesting finding of this research is the non-significance of the relationship between impulse buying intentions and actual behaviour. The authors suggest that the relationship between impulse buying behaviour and its antecedents is not significantly mediated by an impulse buying intention because a great number of consumers can bypass these purchase intentions and, therefore, factors such as product-knowledge and consumer characteristics (excitement) are more likely to trigger a course of action. These results also mark a shift in the focus of more recent studies, from product-related factors that incite a particular behaviour to cognitive and affective processes which lead to impulse buying, from exterior stimuli (such as store environment, displays, promotions etc.) to innate personality traits which provoke and/or encourage an urge.
2.2.3. Moods and self concept
Apart from the array of marketing and consumer factors, different psychological perspectives referring to the self have been proposed, with an equal focus on cognitive and affective models. Bayley and Nancarrow (1998) explored the rational-emotional nature of the phenomenon in a series of interviews, obtaining confessions from consumers that describe impulse shopping as a “sporadic aberration” or a “surrendering to emotion”. Responses from self scripts led to a classification of styles of impulse purchases, on the basis of the motivation or role of the behaviour: self-confirmation, self-compensation, self-redefining and dysfunctional roles. A distinction is also made on the type of openness to the shop experience. Keeping to the rational-emotional dichotomy, this study distinguishes between self-willed
impulses (a semi-conscious direction of the impulse towards the purchase) and captivated impulses (submitting fully to the passion of the impulse). Dittmar and Drury (2000) also
found a significant relationship between engaging in impulse purchasing and a customer’s self concept. Their research identified internal motivations (such as mood repair) and self-image concerns as patterns which characterize most impulse shopping episodes. In their conceptualization of the reflective-impulsive model, Strack et al. (2006) also acknowledge that “impulsive consumer reactions may be facilitated by the experience of affect”. Considering previous research, these authors postulate that a product is more likely to be purchased and consumed when the buyer is in a positive state of mind.
is not demonstrated. Along the same lines of esteem and excitement, Hausman (2000) proves that consumers shop impulsively to satisfy a range of hedonic needs: from simple needs of novelty, fun and surprise to higher-order needs such as esteem and self-actualization needs. Typical responses in this study included comparisons of impulse shopping to “therapy”, “something we can do together”, “a mission to find something different” and “[something that] allows me to have some control over an aspect of my life”. Hausman’s series of in-depth interviews demonstrates that, although considered irrational decisions, impulse purchases satisfy a range of higher-order needs and may be catalogued as “social pleasures”.
This coincides with Eliott’s (1994) view on the functions of normal consumption, i.e. maintaining consumers in a positive mood and repairing negative emotional states, but also with other more focused studies, for instance Rook and Gardner’s (1993) (quoted in Kacen and Lee, 2002) investigation into moods that trigger “automatic” or “scriptlike” themes and, subsequent, purchases. While some research has attempted to determine antecedents of impulse shopping in the form of person-related variables, like education (Wood, 1998), a distinct direction was taken by those authors who view the tendency to impulse shop as being rooted in personality (Verplanken and Herabadi, 2001). Personality-related variables belonging to both the cognitive facet and affective one served as the basis for an impulse buying tendency scale, which led to some assumptions as to why people shop impulsively: to express themselves or a group identity or to “channel or deal with emotions” – reward and comfort (Verplanken and Herabadi, 2001). The cognitive facet of impulse buying tendency was found to be inversely related to personal need for structure, conscientiousness and need to evaluate, while the affective facet was related to lack of autonomy and action orientation. Understanding that impulse buying tendency is an individual difference variable and establishing its relationship to extraversion, Verplanken and Herabadi (2001) also conclude that this type of behaviour is deemed irrational, but the authors are not quick to classify these purchases as non-functional.
Some of the motives for engaging in impulsive shopping (self-esteem issues, propensity for fantasy) have been described as being similar to those of compulsive consumption (O’Guinn and Faber, 1989, Hanley, 1992), but the frequency of occurrence and the severity of consequences place the two behaviours in distinct typologies.
2.3. Moderators of impulsivity in a consumer context
Of noteworthy mention are the findings which relate impulse purchase behaviour to different factors moderating its scope. The academic field seems to agree on the clear distinction between an urge to buy something spontaneously, an innate propensity to engage in this behaviour and the actual carrying out of the purchase.
determine if the buyer classifies the act of spontaneously purchasing as acceptable or if he/she discourages the impulse, constrained by a perception of tight norms.
Kacen and Lee (2008) further developed the issue, discovering that normative social influences are more influential for shoppers from collectivist cultures than for those from individualistic cultures. Social influence is also a research topic for Luo (2005), who finds that impulse buying is more likely to occur in group circumstances than when shopping alone, that it is a behaviour encouraged by interaction with peers and not with family. The moderators of this effect are presented to be the cohesiveness of the group and the individual’s susceptibility to social influence. The main finding is that family cohesiveness and peer cohesiveness have opposite effects. By contrast to family presence, peer presence has a stronger positive effect when the group is cohesive and the individual is susceptible to influence. The implications of these results are that advertising and promotions strategies should be designed differently for the two types of shopping groups.
A final issue is that of self control and its role in regulating impulses (Baumeister, 2002) and, particularly how the loss of self-regulatory functions can encourage impulse purchases (Vohs and Faber, 2007). Depletion of self-regulatory resources was found to bring about an increased wanting response, with no correlation to the liking response. This is consistent with the research of Shiv and Fedorikhin (1999) (quoted in Strack et al., 2006) who proved experimentally that when processing resources were limited, spontaneously evoked affective reactions seemed to have a greater impact on the consumer’s decision, resulting in a choice for an unhealthy, but tastier desert. We may infer that reflective judgements are of little importance when the buyer is unable to fully process a purchase decision and that affect will eventually determine the final decision.
Impulse buying behaviour has, thus, been extensively researched and linked to numerous factors, be they situational, personality-related, culture specific or emotionally driven. A clear understanding of the concept can only be attained when analyzing it from more than one angle and in relation to more than one direct cause.
2.4. Impulse buying and regrets
By contrast to other aspects of the issue, regrets resulting from impulse shopping experiences have received far less scrutiny in academic research. The extent to which regret occurs, the form it takes or its relationship to either the product purchased or the actual purchasing behaviour are only several of the fields which are still marked by unanswered questions. In order to better assess the role and incidence of regrets in an impulse purchase context, one must first look at what has been previously found on this emotion in the context of planned purchases.
2.4.1. Dimensions of regret
as planned buying is usually more “thought through” (Ditmar and Drury, 2000). However, regret does not mandatory accompany a spontaneous purchase and the form it takes could concern different dimensions of impulse buying. In analyzing the differences between ordinary and excessive consumers, Ditmar and Drury (2000) uncovered five different forms taken by regret after such a purchase: regretting the good because of its quality or functionality, regretting the money spent on the item, experiencing a state of internal conflict (‘ought’ versus ‘desire’), regretting not using the money for others and regret stemming from not receiving the expected psychological benefit from the product. Consequently, it is possible that after an impulse purchase some aspects are regretted, whereas others are not.
While most regret studies have focused on measuring the emotion as a one-sided construct, this paper will investigate regret for impulse purchases along the previously mentioned five dimensions. Given the scarcity of knowledge on post-purchase feelings triggered by a spontaneous purchase, regret will be assessed as a de-assembled structure, on several distinctive and independent components: possession regret, financial regret,
impulsivity regret, self-gifting regret and hedonism regret. The rationale behind this approach
is that of better evaluating the construct and of uncovering the specificifity of this emotion for impulsive purchases
2.4.2. Purchase outcomes and regrets
One of the most prolific directions of research related to regret deals with the negative emotion’s onset and its intensity in the action – inaction dichotomy. Kahneman and Tversky (1982, quoted in Zeelenberg et al, 2002) pioneered the concept of the omission bias in a now classical regret experiment, demonstrating that bad outcomes following actions would result in greater regrets than would identical bad outcomes following inactions. This type of cognitive bias has been labeled the omission bias and has been a starting point for a number of empirical studies. The fundamental of the omission bias is the general-approval of the fact that actions are more abnormal than inactions, as a person is more willing to imagine himself/herself maintaining the status quo than changing the status quo. Therefore, actions have a higher probability of being regretted than inactions. Li and Liang (2007) demonstrated that differential mutability (i.e. action being altered more readily than inaction) mediates this regret effect of the omission bias. They argue that actions need not always be accompanied by greater regret than inactions, the effect of the afore mentioned direction being moderated by closeness. According to their findings, inactions are at least as intensely regretted as actions or even more regretted when actions are moved away from a good outcome.
(Hausman, 2000) and, therefore, spontaneous buys could be considered a variation or subcategory of limited opportunities for the consumer.
The hypothesis which arises from the previous arguments is:
H1a: Regret for impulse purchases will be experienced as a reversal of the omission bias – post-purchase regrets will be higher for scenarios of inaction than for those of action cases.
Integrating regret in the outcome dichotomy serves as a starting point for measuring exactly what is recorded by shoppers after the occurrence of the urge and the conclusion of the transaction. However, much of what is experienced by shoppers is not a matter of isolated, one-time emotions. More realistically, regrets, in general, and impulse regrets, in particular, are not construed as being transitory, but often their prevalence has a longer length than that of the urge itself. An inspection is, thus, in order, for the temporal trajectory for regrets of impulsive urges.
2.4.3. Impulse shopping, regrets and psychological distance
In effect, why is impulse buying so distinct from any other form of planned purchase and why should the former entail a stronger affective reaction than the later? A possible answer to these questions can be found in studies focusing on the individual’s perception of psychological distance. Research in behavioral science has come to an agreement that people assess the psychological distance of stimuli related to spatial distance, temporal distance, social distance and hypothecality and these, in turn, give shape to their level of construal, prediction, affect and choice at any given moment (Liberman et al, 2007). At the heart of construal level theory (CLT) is the idea that mental construal involves different levels of abstraction (Liberman et al, 2002). Integrating psychological distance in impulsivity studies could prove fruitful in predicting various affective and behavioral outcomes of spontaneous purchases, while also emphasizing the uniqueness of this form of consumer behaviour. The following section relates different kinds of distances to an impulsive buy situation and details how they could impact the result of the transaction.
Firstly, temporal distance can explain how the construal of actions in the distant future is different from the one for actions in the near future. Liberman and Trope (1998, quoted in Liberman et al, 2002) empirically proved that in decisions for the distant future information about the “why” aspect of actions were more influential, whereas for near future decisions it was the “how” aspect that was most salient in people’s minds. Moreover, near future actions were discovered to be associated with lower level descriptions (i.e., more concrete wording). These findings coincide with the typical description of an impulse purchase, which is most always presented as being engaged in with no pre-shopping intentions (Matilla and Wirtz, 2008), as being unreflective (Jones et al, 2003) and as being more arousing that planned buys (Kacen and Lee, 2008). Given that near-future expectations are thought of in less schematic terms (Liberman et al, 2002), it seems plausible why few shoppers manage to control their urges. More specifically, a whole host of stimuli (store environment, mood, presence of peers etc.) will direct the attention of a potential shopper to questions such as how soon and by what means can the transaction be carried out, in detriment of considerations for the purpose or the utility of the desired item.
that, in the long-term, inactions are regretted more than actions. The temporal profile proposed by these authors is grounded in the differential cognitive availability of regrettable actions and inactions. Specifically, a regretted inaction is described as an omission, which could still be accomplished in the present day and, hence, the stronger regret is brought on by a feeling of incompleteness. Without contradicting these findings, this paper proposes an incongruous time course for regrets of different outcomes. Any impulsive urge, once dismissed, is not likely to trouble the consumer in the exact form it had once occurred. We can therefore not classify inactions resulting from spontaneous urges as ensuing long-term feelings of incompleteness. Impulses are transitory; not all are remembered with the same intensity. In addition to this, pro and con considerations may influence the direction one person’s regret takes, with cons for action being more salient as a result of normative evaluations. We therefore propose the following hypothesis:
H1b: Post-purchase regrets will increase over time for action outcomes, while regrets for denying an urge will decrease.
A second dimension of psychological distance, spatial distance, also determines the amount of information that is available about an object. The more a person perceives an object to be in close proximity, the higher the likelihood that he/she will think about it on a low-level construal. The closer one is to an object, the more accurate and detailed the information about it becomes (Liberman et al, 2007), which would explain why so few people give little reflection to general characteristics (such as functionality or long-term use), but focus on concrete product attributes (size, shape, color, taste etc.) during an impulse purchase. The availability of touch information at the point of display, found to be a stimulator for impulsiveness (Peck and Childers, 2006), supports the reasoning that construal of spatial distance is highly concrete for impulse shoppers. By contrast, an item planned for purchase beforehand will be thought of in different terms, with a more abstract representation in the mind of the consumer.
Lastly, psychological distance can also be interpreted in terms of hypotheticality and probability. As lower levels of construal are used to imagine a possible event, the chances are that they will seem more likely and more probable in occurrence than if higher-levels were used in construing the incident (Liberman et al, 2007). Therefore, considering the concrete and tangible nature of an impulse buy, its construal on a lower level will make it seem more likely. It has been proposed that the mere existence of low-level concrete details gives rise to a feeling of greater reality and likelihood (Liberman et al, 2007), an ascertainment that partly explains why a consumer finds it so difficult to resist an impulsive urge. It should be noted that the relationship between hypotheticality and level of construal is bidirectional, as noted by these authors, which would imply that not only will the level of construal affect the realism of a purchase situation, but also that the realism of the event will affect the level of construal.
of an impulse buy on a consumer’s emotional reaction and in establishing if indeed there is a cause-effect relationship between different shopping episodes.
2.4.4. Regrets and post-purchase considerations
Asserting that regrets can arise from counterfactual thinking is little short of obvious. Emotional reactions have been found to be driven not only by what actually happens, but also by what almost happened (Galinsky and Moskowitz, 2000). In a very broad study, Katherine Landman (1993) acknowledged that regret may arise from overt acts as well as from one’s inner acts (such as thoughts, attitudes, wishes or impulses) and clearly associated this emotion with counterfactual thought. Thus, in an impulse buy situation, the consumer might just as likely regret the purchase or the urge which led him/her to the buying situation or a number of other aspects of the situation, as highlighted previously. Counterfactual emotions involve the considerations of alternatives to reality (Liberman et al, 2007), they are pervasive in mental life (Roese, 1994, in Galinsky and Moskowitz, 2000), they are subjected to the influence of external and internal stimuli (Galisnky and Moskowitz, 2000) and they can take either an upward or downward direction (Galinsky and Moskowitz, 2000). In essence, an impulse buy situation is prone to giving rise to upward counterfactual thoughts, where a more positive alternative is compared to the actual outcome of the purchase. The “speed” with which a decision to buy impulsively is made leaves room for subsequent considerations which could shed an unfavourbale light on the outcome and elicit a number of “What if…?” scenarios in the mind of the buyer. We proposition that:
H2a: There is a positive association between the level of counterfactual thinking a consumer engages in and the intensity of regret experienced for an impulsive urge outcome.
Up to now, we have been contending that regret is indeed a core component of an impulse buy (Wood, 1998). But, whether it is experienced often or infrequently and whether it increases or decreases in intensity is also a question of how the consumer justifies the purchase to him/herself. Justification is expected to set in and mediate emotions in the long-run. Given the simultaneously cognitive and affective nature of impulse shopping, consumers can develop strategies to rationalize feelings of regret, as has been shown in qualitative explorations of impulse buys (Bayley and Nancarrow (1998)). Among the strategies that are at hand, justification in terms of self-gifting are quite common. Although self-gifting as a phenomenon has been described as an active and premeditated activity (Mick and Demoss, 1990), most accounts of self-gifting from literature include hedonic descriptors (“refreshed”, “proud”, “satisfied”, “excited” etc.) similar to those which characterize an impulsive purchase. It could hence be inferred that this form of justification is at-hand in minimizing feelings of regret after an unplanned and spontaneous buy. Similar types of rationalization could include product attributes (quality, value for money, useful life) or buyer characteristics (frequency of purchase, shopping abilities) and, their incidence in retail situations motivates us to hypothesize that:
H2b: The intensity of regrets in the long-term will be mediated by justification of the outcome.
reflective and impulsive processes and that these two systems can stand in competition with one another on particular buyer choices. On any given occasion, a customer’s reflective judgment may decide that a purchase is not good, while the impulsive system may drive him/her to act on the spot, in a way that is incompatible with the afore mentioned knowledge. Acting spontaneously and not taking into account long-term goals may generate regret for having yielded to the impulse (Baumeister, 2002). Financial woes and budgetary constraints are among the most common themes mentioned by shopper groups in studies on impulsivity (Ditmar and Drury, 2000), however the desire for the item usually outweighs the financial consequences. The urge to possess the craved for product has been found to be related to hedonic needs, such as: the intention to satisfy social requirements, the desire to satisfy self-esteem (Hausman, 2000) or self image compensation goals (Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998) and the need to symbolize attitudes and lifestyles through the consumption of products (Tauber,1995). Previous studies give accounts of shopping episodes were buyers were enslaved by a particular good: “A beautiful dress […]. This dress really caught my eye. When
I went in and tried it on, it really fit. It was like the dress was really made for me” (Hausman,
2000). Given that products are so intimately entwined in consumers’ daily lives and that such an emphasize is placed on the value of the tangible good, possession becomes critical for impulsive urges as the product itself is seen as a means to an end. We postulate, therefore, that, upon initiation of the urge, ownership will be the main driver of the outcome, impacting substantially on the intensity with which regret is felt.
H2c: The intensity of regrets in the short-term will be mediated by ownership considerations.
2.4.5. The transaction web and regrets
The idea of numerous opportunities and the regret that arises from one opportunity influencing the other has been exploited in many directions in research. Zeelenberg et al. (2002) coined the term “inaction effect”, referring to prior outcomes influencing regret following current actions or inactions. A series of four experiments revealed that the information known about a prior outcome shapes the effects that action/inaction have on counterfactual thinking. Negative prior outcomes can induce a tendency to act. Subsequently, negative prior outcomes will trigger greater regret for inaction as opposed to action situations. The novelty of this study was embedding actions in a sequence and not analyzing them in isolation. For impulse shopping this tactic should be worth consideration as well, since it is an approach that “more closely resembles reality” (Zeelenberg et al., 2002).
the consumer in impulsively buying a chair at present. If the two opportunities are not comparable, if there is ambiguity in their relationship or if the psychological distance between them is distant, inaction inertia may not occur. The implication of this research for impulsivity in consumer behaviour is that acknowledgement of past regret can hinder or encourage a spontaneous purchase when it is compared with a past missed opportunity. It would seem from the two directions taken in these studies that, at least in theory and in experimental conditions, regret could be an influencing factor on acting impulsively in a store environment. We postulate, consequently, that:
H3: There is a positive association between experiencing regret for an unconcluded transaction (a dismissed urge), experiencing subsequent desires and acting upon them.
Regrets have also raised questions in relation to a consumer’s switching or repeating purchasing behaviour. Inman and Zeelenberg (2002) analyzed the status quo effect, determining that consumers are inclined to feel more regret after they switch than following a decision to repeat a past decision. This affective reaction was found to be moderated by the consumer’s motivation to act in one direction or another, in the sense that the more a decision is unreasonable or indefensible, the more regrets it will spawn. Knowing this, we may infer that in an impulse purchase episode, the status quo effect will be eliminated and the buyer will not experience a high degree of regret should he/she justify the decision as being a righteous one. Impulse shopping, or shopping “beyond functional needs” (Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998), does not have to be accompanied by a feeling of “guilt” when the consumer is able to find the rationale behind the purchase, when coping strategies dismiss all feeling of regret and even encourage subsequent repeat behaviour. However, one cannot analyze this justifiability of decisions without overlooking the responsibility a decision maker accounts for in taking a course of action. It has been posited that regret is directly related to responsibility, suggesting that the consumer blames himself/herself for the outcome of his/her own decisions (Zeelenberg et al, 1998). This implies that the more a person perceives the outcome to be the result of his/her choice, the more he/she is likely to experience regret. Therefore, in spite of coping attempts being made by the shopper post-purchase, it is hard to imagine not taking responsibility for buying a product that satisfies an unconscious and unarticulated need.
Up to now we have mostly discussed regret in its most common form, i.e. decision regret. Decision regret is understood as the “emotion felt as a consequence of a decision which, after the fact, appears to have been a wrong or poor decision” (Bayley and Kinerson, 2005). However, regret need not just be the result of consumer behaviour, but it can also precede it, as was briefly shown in the explanation of the inaction inertia effect. In the case of predicted regret, consumers will allow their final decision to be affected by the anticipation of the way they may feel after the purchase has occurred (Spears, 2006). In a novel approach, Spears (2006) postulated that regret can trigger an impulse purchase, not merely result from it. Given a sudden urge to acquire a product, the consumer may seek to minimize the regret that would accompany losing the opportunity to experience immediate gratification. Thus, as the transaction unfolds, the buyer is able to act on his impulse, as a result of not having to give up on anticipated pleasures. While this assessment seems valid, regret has not been found to be a major motivator of impulse purchases in other research and the question remains open for debate.
all possible future aversive consequences for various alternatives, a cognitive effort which may result in anticipatory regret; that in turn will drive the subsequent “buy/not buy” decision (Crawford et al., 2002). For impulse purchases, the role of anticipated regret has not been analyzed, but some speculations can be made drawing from planned purchases research. With respect to purchase timing it has been posited that, if consumers take the time to consider what their affective response would be in the event of a wrong choice, they would be more likely to make the purchase earlier (Simonson, 1992). This would imply that considering the outcome of not giving in to an urge should trigger an emotional reaction (anticipated regret) which in turn should speed up the purchasing processes. Simply put, envisioning a state of deprivation (no product purchased) would lead to a faster purchasing process. A problematic issue for marketers is, thus, how to trigger this anticipated regret in an effort to encourage spontaneous purchases. Even as some producers “fish” for these emotional responses with their ads (Tsiros and Mittal, 2000), it is still unclear whether anticipatory regret is an antecedent of impulse purchases.
Whether it can trigger an impulse purchase or not, anticipation of regret can most certainly thwart a consumer from buying impulsively. When anticipatory regret occurs as a consequence of potential negative normative evaluations it can inhibit spontaneous purchases or may imply a more rationale deliberation and justification of the expected behaviour (Rook and Fisher, 1995). Zeelenberg (1999) suggested several reasons when anticipatory regret could occur and illustrated the influence these could have on consumer actions. Behaviours such as weighing the alternatives before deciding on one form of action or pondering on the opinions of the buyer’s social network could deter the shopper from acting on his/her impulsiveness. However, as the anticipation of post-behavioral consequences implies considerable cognitive processing (Herabadi, 2008) and, given that impulse shopping is known to be a form of “sudden and immediate purchase” (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998), a direct link between anticipated regret and the succumbing to desire has yet to be found.
2.5. Research objectives
3. Methodology
3.1. Method and sample
The hypotheses of this research concern a causal relationship between impulse buying behaviour and the occurrence of regrets. As such, participants were assigned randomly to one of the four cells of a 2 (action vs. inaction) x 2 (short-term vs. long-term) design.
This study used a convenience sample of 80 undergraduate and graduate students. One respondent’s answers were excluded as a result of being incomplete. For this study, the respondents’ age was coded in intervals with a classification which included 4 groups: 20 years and below (group 1), 21 – 29 years old (group 2), 30 – 39 years old (group 3) and 40 years an above (group 4). The great majority of participants (88%) were in the age group 21 to 29 years-old, with the median being included in group 2. The sample was characterized by a predominance of female to male respondents (61.5% vs. 38.5%). The distribution of participants between conditions showed a proportion of 30 to 40% of men for each scenario and of 60 to 70% for women. The gender ratio is not an uncommon occurrence in impulsivity studies, but its potential influence on response bias will be assessed. Analysis of the education variable revealed that half of the respondents were master students, while the other half was distributed between bachelor and pre-master students. The PhD category was not represented in this study. 30% of participants were recorded as having a full-time employment status, with nearly 50% being unemployed and the remainder part working solely part-time.
3.2. Procedure
Respondents were contacted through several online student discussion groups and social networks connected to two large universities (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen – The Netherlands and The Academy of Economic Studies from Bucharest – Romania) and directed towards the web addresses of the experiment questionnaires. All participants filled in an English version of the questionnaire (see Appendix 2 for the action-short-term version). They were instructed that they would be taking part in an experiment devised to understand consumer behaviour in the retail environment as well as post-purchase evaluations. The instruction paragraph also emphasized the importance of transposing themselves in the hypothetical situation and at the specified moment in time.
The scenario used was a modified version of the one designed by Rook and Fisher (1995). This choice was motivated by two main reasons. Firstly, the scenario was proven by the original authors to result in no gender effects. Rook and Fisher (1995) found no gender effects of the stimulus when testing an identical scenario with a male imaginary character. Secondly, this scenario has been used repeatedly since its inception by other researchers studying impulsivity (Luo, 2005) and in all cases the studies concluded with valid results.
The two independent variables were manipulated through verbal nuances. In the two inaction conditions, the last sentence from the first paragraph read “But in the end, Cameron
purchases the dress and leaves the department store with the presents for her friends, the hat and the scarf, and the dress”. The temporal dimension was manipulated with direct
referencing to the current date: in the long-term conditions, the second paragraph read “Two
months have passed since Cameron’s shopping trip […]”, whereas the short-term conditions
specified that “Cameron is currently on her way home from the shopping trip […]”.
Upon reading the scenario, respondents were asked to complete a questionnaire, where they were instructed to rate items on 7-point Likert scales.
3.3. Questionnaire design
The ability of participants to transpose themselves in the proposed situation was assessed with a control question, evaluating the degree of identification with the scenario character. More than 85% of the sample scored higher than the mean on this item, guaranteeing the validity of results.
The scales employed in this research are described in the following sections.
3.3.1. Regret items
The first item in the study was a combined measurement of the regret the respondent would experience after the described shopping outcome. Unlike previous studies investigating the regret which accompanies a purchase decision (Inman and Zeelenberg, 2002, Li et al, 2007, Zeelenberg et al, 1998, Abendroth and Diehl, 2006), this study measured this emotion along five different dimensions. The usual emotion rating scale that is commonly employed in assessing respondents’ feeling relies on direct questioning regarding the outcome (for example: “How much would you regret your decision to ___?”, Inman and Zeelenberg, 2002). For this study, regret was measured along five distinct dimensions. This choice was motivated by the particularity with which an impulse purchase situation has been proven to be framed by shoppers. The main issue reported by researchers is that of the social desirability bias and how this confounds all studies concerning impulsivity. Relating to this type of behaviour, which is most commonly perceived by respondents as being negative, Mick (1996, quoted in Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998) even goes as far as labeling impulsivity with the phrase “the dark side variable”. Rook and Fisher (1995) also highlight the tendency to classify this behaviour as “irrational, immature, wasteful and risky” and describe the consequences of such actions as a departure from existing social norms. Therefore, asking respondents directly on whether they regret the outcome would provide us with a very vague, potentially biased, measure of their emotional response.
A second issue that called for a more extensive variable was the author’s intention to study the components of regret for giving in to or refraining from an impulsive urge. Although regret (Verplanken and Herabadi, 2001, Rook and Fisher, 1995), disappointment (Herabadi, 2003), guilt and rationality (Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998) and satisfaction (Hausman, 2000) have all been mentioned as consequences of this particular shopping experience, to my knowledge, there have been no quantitative studies assessing either the intensity of regret as a whole for impulsive urges, nor the intensity of regret along its different components. Therefore, in order to obtain a more inclusive measure, in this experiment regret was analyzed on five different levels, anchored in No regret and Very
strong regret. This compound item was derived from the results of the only qualitative study
up an inventory of five themes which can be regretted, either jointly or separately, by shoppers who have acted impulsively. These five variables were adapted as follows (text marked in cursive stands for the original classification from the qualitative study):
the actual good bought is regretted was adapted to “(not) owning the dress” as
an indicator of how much the actual product is regretted;
regret for the money they had spent on the purchase was shortened into “(not)
spending the money”, a means of assessing the regret for the financial choice of the shopper;
internal conflict between «ought» and «desire» was measured by asking
respondents to weight the intensity with which they regretted experiencing “the urge to buy something on the spot”;
feeling guilty if the impulse buy was for themselves was adapted to
“purchasing something for herself”. The importance of this item resides in the need to determine whether there is a basis to the finding that self-gifts are seldom second-guessed (Mick and Demoss, 1990);
[the purchase was] disappointing in terms of expected psychological benefits,
possibly the most difficult item of the scale to measure in a quantitative approach, was presented as “shopping for hedonic reasons”. While the scenario makes no reference to the hypothetical situation as being an impulsive one, it does, however, stress the unplanned nature of the shopping experience and the lack of perceived utility that the buyer endows the product with. Consequently, the scale called for an item that would weigh just how much regret is placed on the incident of shopping with no prior functional needs in mind.
The subsequent questions in the study were all meant to investigate potential explanations for the occurrence and intensity of regrets.
3.3.2. Counterfactual items
Question 2 was a combined measure of the subject’s propensity to engage in counterfactual thinking. Adapted from Schwartz et al’s (2002) Regret Scale - which was designed to evaluate sensitivity to regret -, the item included case-adjusted statements, as it was not the object of this study to evaluate one’s tendency to experience regrets on average. Quite the opposite, this compound item evaluated respondents’ situation-specific level of counterfactual generation, assessing their agreement with inter-related statements:
- Cameron is curious about what the alternative outcome would have felt like
- Cameron want to go back to the store and try to return the dress
- Cameron feels like a failure because of buying the dress
- Cameron shouldn’t look back on her choice (reverse coded item).
3.3.3. Justification items
To test whether justification could actually be correlated to the regret associated to the purchase outcome, question 3 attempted to assess the degree of rationalization of buyers. In designing this compound item, a group of six product characteristics considered to be most salient to consumers were used: visibility of quality determinants, information costs, price level, frequency of purchase, durability and prestige (Hanf and Werbse, 1994). It was expected that, if justification came into play, it will be along one of these dimensions.
Specific items included in the study were:
- quality rationalization: Cameron believes that the dress is high-quality;
- information costs: Cameron was efficient in not spending a lot of time in looking
for the dress;
- price level: Cameron profited from a bargain in buying the dress;
- frequency of purchase: Cameron considers herself an experienced shopper; - durability: Cameron purchased a dress for long-term use;
- prestige: The dress will improve Cameron’s feeling of self-worth.
3.3.4. Ownership items
Question 4 was a measure of the value shoppers place on the actual ownership of the product. The five entries which made it up were derived from the emotional items of the consumer perceived value scale developed by Sweeney and Soutar (2001) and are all related to the experience of possessing the product. The items for the action conditions are as follows:
- The dress is an item that Cameron enjoys;
- Owning the dress makes Cameron want to wear it;
- Cameron feels relaxed about wearing the dress;
- Owning the dress makes Cameron feel good;
- Owning the dress gives Cameron pleasure.
3.3.5. Subsequent buying urge items
To establish a potential link between the regrets incurred for dismissing an urge and a future desire, participants in the inaction condition were also asked to evaluate the likelihood that the scenario character would experience a similar urge to make an unplanned purchase in the future. The item specifically asked that this probability be rated for three distinct products:
a clothing item, a non-clothing item and a product which is on sale.
3.3.6. Expected behavioral intentions items
Because experiencing an urge gives no precise indication of whether it will be acted upon, a distinct question in the survey addressed the probability of following a subsequent desire. This likelihood was measured for the same three items which made up the previous question, on seven point scales.
3.3.7. Buying impulsiveness scale
insight from field literature has alerted us of personality variables that do not change from case to case and which can indeed affect an outcome.
The most prominent of these variables, the buying impulsivity tendency (IBT), was included in the present research and tested for with the means of the scale developed by Rook and Fisher (1995). This study maintained all the original 9 items (the last-but-one item was reverse coded – “I carefully plan most of my purchases”), but converted the original 5 point scale into a 7-point one. The instrument designed to measure a consumer’s IBT consisted of items which indirectly assessed how impulsive one is in deciding to purchase goods (for example, “I often buy things without thinking” or “Sometimes I feel like buying things on the
