GROWING IMPORTANCE OF STUDYING “IMPULSE PURCHASE”

The Business Wallpaper, Volume 2 Issue 2, April 2007

AUTHOR:
Siti Nor Bayaah Ahmad and
Abdul Aziz bin Mohamed

ABSTRACT:

The sense of smell is often used to stimulate and attract customer attention. Researchers have generally differentiated scents along three different, although not necessarily independent dimensions (Spangenberg et al., 1996). They include the affective quality of the scent (e.g., how pleasant it is), its arousing nature (e.g., how likely it is to evoke a physiological response), and its intensity (e.g., how strong it is). In the United States, retail outlets such as Body Shop and Crabtree & Evelyn sell scented bath oils and soaps along with fragrant catches to create their own unique identity. In large department

stores, walking through a cosmetic department can be made more enticing to an impulse purchaser as fragrances are offered to be sniffed and sprayed on their arms (Kovach, 1999).

Applying the  Mehrabian and Russell model to a retail environment, Donovan and Rossiter (1982) showed that two dimensions of affect, namely pleasure and arousal, could predict customer behavior in retail settings. The pleasure displeasure dimension reflects the degree, to which a person feels happy, joyful, good or satisfied with the situation, whereas the arousal nonarousal dimension taps the degree to which a person feels alert, excited, timulated or active in a particular situation. Donovan et al. (1994) found that pleasant environments contribute to extra time and unplanned shopping. So becoming aware of the buying environment can help you see what items you are more likely to spend impulsively on and give you the power to say NO. But sometimes you cannot just let go a good deal, right? Maybe it is a good thing if you could ask yourself several questions before proceeding with your purchase; questions like “Have I bought items like this before and never used them? Am I buying it because it makes me feel better? Am I making a purchase I can’t really afford? Giving extra effort in thinking about your purchase can help you decide whether the purchase is really necessary and keep you from mindlessly spending on useless items. Be honest and ask yourself why you are buying a particular item.

According to Philip Hesketh in his book titled "Life's a Game So Fix the Odds", (2005), we go  through life like a person riding a horse; the horse is 95% of the whole and we are just 5%. The horse is our subconscious mind and we are the rider. In many situations, we the rider is not in control of the horse. Buyer's remorse is but one of the many things we do to justify what our "horse" made us do.

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