Impulsive buying structure in retailing: An interpretive structural modeling approach

In today’s competitive business scenario, the entire retail industry is facing a tough challenge in attracting shoppers. Besides reduced prices and sales promotions, sellers have recognized many other factors that entice consumers to visit retail stores like, pleasant experiences, eye-catching displays and store aroma, and so on. Retailers need to understand the buying behaviour of the consumers and the variables associated with it. The purpose of the present study is to scrutinize the inter-relationship among various antecedent factors that define impulsive buying behaviour among shoppers. From past researches, this study extracted antecedent factors constituting impulsive buying. Through extensive discussions among experts from industry and academia, a qualitative assessment of the relationship between these factors was undertaken. With mathematical computations, as suggested under Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM), a conceptual model is proposed to explain impulsive buying. The model reflects that all the six congregating factors do not trigger impulsive buying directly. It follows a hierarchy-of-effects model, with merchandising display initially sparking the urge for impulsive tendency. Merchandising displays increase the effectiveness of both – promotional schemes and incentives, and retailer-induced instore efforts. These two factors further enhance the effect of socialization and crowd in malls, which cumulatively contribute to arousal of hedonism that eventually leads to impulsive buying. The retail industry, especially the mall developers and supermarket/hypermarket may use the findings in strategizing to enhance their ability to engage, arouse and achieve impulivse buying among shoppers. The proposed hierarchical model with interconnection of these component factors will be of immense interest to retail/mall managers and researchers. This can be a valuable guide for resource allocation. © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.