Buying Behaviour: Impulse vs. unplanned buying

All of the above purchase situations have some commonalties- all the buying decisions are made in the store. They are either impulse buying or unplanned buying. Unplanned buying and impulse purchasing are ubiquitous aspects of consumer buying behaviour. Personal traits of shoppers, age, income, number of people accompanied in shopping and situational factors like availability of money and time, purchased items, price of the products have direct or indirect influence on unplanned and impulse purchase.

According to a study done by Welles (1986), nine out of ten buyers occasionally shop on impulse. Various researches have reported that a steady growth trend is observed in unplanned buying not only in western countries but also in eastern emerging countries. In emerging economies like China, Brazil or in India impulse-purchasing trend is increasing. Along with the development of Indian economy, a cultural transformation fr
om future oriented to present oriented attitude also play a vital role in the rapid growth of unplanned purchase. Ballenger et al. (1978) have distinguished impulse buying from impulse items. Question arises here, whether there is a difference between unplanned buying and impulse buying. Let us have a close look on the similarities and dissimilarities between them-

·         Both unplanned and in store buying are  familiar form of in-store buying behaviour.

·         Consumer normally make any unplanned purchase because of some store display, which reminds them that this particular product might be required in future. Unplanned purchase normally bought by considering a future need. An impulse purchase is also an unplanned purchase but here the motive might be different. Here the shopper is influenced by some irresistible promotional offers and the motive for purchase is hedonistic pleasure or for gaining immediate self-gratification. 

·         Donovan et al (1994) and Betty and Ferrel (1998) have argued that impulse purchase is an incidental procedure where purchasers are mediated by pleasure, arousal dominance or affect. Situational variables like money availability, time availability have direct influence on impulse purchase intention and as well as on amount of purchase. Unplanned purchase also can be motivated by promotional strategies, especially store display or price offers but here the future need or price sensitivity dominate the purchase motive.

·         A large number of researchers distinguished impulse buying and  unplanned buying, as they mentioned impulse buying as a spontaneous urge to buy whereas unplanned buying is the absence of a decision before the trip of shopping made. (Rook and Fisher (1995) and Beatty and Ferrell (1998), Strack, Werth, and Deutsch (2006); Vohs and Faber (2007)).

·         Both unplanned and impulse purchase occurred when consumers experience a sudden, powerful and persistent urge to buy something immediately. However, mostly the impulse purchase is hedonically complex.

·         Unplanned buying includes more of reminder items that fulfil a planned task, such as buying a gift for someone (Betty and Farewell, 1998). Here some amount of rationality works for buying reminder items. Whereas impulse purchase is characterized by relatively rapid decision making, more emotional decision making than rational decision-making (Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998; Rook 1987; Rook and Hoch 1985).

Technically impulse purchase can be called as a subset of unplanned buying and to be very specific there is not much difference between the two. In fact deliberate unplanned buying has become an integral part of contemporary shopping because of the development of Indian economy. Shopping has become another recreation and people are shopping not just to buy products but also to seek some novelty and have fun.

Another issue related to unplanned and impulse purchasing is to operationalize the definitions. According to Kollat & Willet (1969; 81) there is considerable differences in opinion about what is meant by impulse purchase and how to measure it. One definition said, customers may be questioned about what are items they have in their list or they intend to buy while entering a store and the same customers can be queried again when they come out from the store.  The difference between the intention and actual purchase may be called as unplanned or impulse purchase. The second method is about asking shoppers upon exiting a store about each item they purchased, when they decided to purchase this item- was it before or after entering the store. Both the measurement have some problems associated with them, which make the research on impulse purchase more complex.

Famous psychologist Freud (1956) has explained impulses as the consequences of two competing forces- the pleasure principle and the reality principle. Pleasure principle motivates people for immediate gratification whereas reality principle encourages delayed gratification. Impulse purchase often difficult to resist by a purchaser as it immediately bring the gratification and hedonic pleasure. It also involves enjoyment in a form of sensory stimulation and pampering oneself. Marketer should make store design and in store promotions more engaging, more attractive and more pleasing experience so that customers would indulge more impulse purchasing. Positive situational variables like store attributes and store promotional offers increase amount of impulse purchases. A study done by Geetha and Bharadhwaj (2016), found that in a collective country like India, shoppers might have suppressed their urge for impulse purchases. Retailers should make extra efforts to make store more attractive so that consumers spend extra time at store and they would buy products, which are not there at the shopping list
. Consecutively the retailers would gain extra, as the amount of unplanned and impulse purchase would improve.