نفوذ فرهنگ بر رفتار خرید تکانشی مصرف کننده

Impulse buying generates over $4 billion in annual sales volume in the United States. With the growth of e-commerce and television shopping channels, consumers have easy access to impulse purchasing opportunities, but little is known about this sudden, compelling, hedonically complex purchasing behavior in non-Western cultures. Yet cultural factors moderate many aspects of consumer's impulsive buying behavior, including self-identity, normative influences, the suppression of emotion, and the postponement of instant gratification. From a multi-country survey of consumers in Australia, United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, our analyses show that both regional level factors (individualism–collectivism) and individual cultural difference factors (independent –interdependent self-concept) systematically influence impulsive purchasing behavior.

Impulsive consumer buying behavior is a widely recognized phenomenon in the United States. It accounts for up to 80% of all purchases in certain product categories (Abrahams, 1997; Smith, 1996), and it has been suggested that purchases of new products result more from impulse purchasing than from prior planning (Sfiligoj, 1996). A 1997 study found that an estimated $4.2 billion annual store volume was generated by impulse sales of items such as candy and magazines (Mogelonsky, 1998). Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping (I 999), affirms that many purchases are being made on the premises of stores themselves as customers give in to their impulses. Furthermore, technologies such as television shopping channels and the Internet expand consumers' impulse purchasing opportunities, increasing both the accessibility to products and services and the ease with which impulse purchases can be made. Impulsive buying behavior is a sudden, compelling, hedonically complex purchasing behavior in which the rapidity of the impulse purchase decision process precludesthoughtful, deliberate consideration of all information and choice alternatives (Bayley & Nancoaow, 1998; Rook 1987; Thompson, Locander, & Pollio, 1990; Weinberg & Gottwald, 1982). This description is largely based on interviews and surveys of Westerners. The growth of e-commerce and the increasing consumer- orientation of many societies around the world offer expanding occasions for impulse purchasing, but little is known about impulsive buying behavior in non-Western societies. Most of the research on impulse buying focuses on consumers in the United States. A few studies have looked at consumers in Great Britain (Bayley & Nancaaow, 1998; Dittmar, Beattie, & Friese, 1995; McConatha, Lightner, & Deaner, 1994), and South Africa (Abratt & Goodey, 1990) and have found that United States consumers tend to be more impulsive than comparable British and South African samples. However, none of these studies examined explicitly the effect of cultural factors on impulse buying behavior.

Attempts to understand consumer impulse buying behavior based solely on a Western point-of-view is incomplete, at best. The Western-individualist emphasis on the self, individual needs and desires, and hedonistic pleasure encourages impulsive buying behavior. However, Eastem-collectivist notions of the self, which emphasize interdependence, emotional control and moderation, and group needs and desires would seem to discourage impulse buying behavior as it is practiced and described in the West. Due consideration of these differences is warranted. As Rook (1987) correctly stated, buying impulses are presumed to be largely universal in nature, but local market conditions, systems of exchange and various cultural forces will impact how consumers operate on impulse. The findings of the articles in the recent special issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology confirmed that cultural differences are a significant factor and need to be taken into account in our theories of consumer behavior. Our findings demonstrate that culture does have an influence on impulse buying behavior. Although previous researchers have explored the influence of mood and emotions (Donovan et al., 1994; Rook & Gardner, 1993), trait impulsiveness (Rook & Fisher, 1995; Weun et al., 1998), norms (Rook & Fisher, 1995), and self-identity (Dittmar et al., 1995) on consumer impulse buying behavior, none have looked at cultural influences such as collectivist and individualist tendencies, or independent-interdependent self-concept. As shown in this article, cultural factors do moderate consumer impulsive buying behavior. Overall, Asian collectivist consumers engage in less impulsive buying than Caucasian individualist consumers, despite the highly developed shopping culture in East Asia. In addition, there is a weaker correlation between self-reported trait buying impulsiveness and the frequency of impulsive buying behavior for collectivists compared to individualists. This finding supports and extends previous research that found that collectivists are able to maintain inconsistent attitude- behavior relationships (Kashima et al., 1992) and to put their own feelings aside in order to act in an appropriate manner (Triandis, 1995). Although collectivists possess the buying impulsiveness trait in equal measure with individualists, they suppress this trait impulse and act in a manner that is consistent with cultural norms, in this case, reducing their impulsive buying behavior, which has been characterized as a highly individualistic, emotionally charged behavior. In the United States, it is assumed that impulse purchasing is correlated with personality traits, such as variety seeking, sensation seeking, and risk aversion. If the correlations among these variables are weaker in certain countries or regions, there must be other driving factors differentially affecting the amount of impulse purchasing that occurs. One such factor, identified by Rook and Fisher ( 1995), is the social acceptability of impulse purchasing. An interesting area for future research would be to investigate the interaction between culture and the appropriateness of engaging in impulse buying in different situations. Although the ability to control the trait-behavior relationship appears to differ by culture, it is also likely that the appropriateness of the behavior would influence the desire and thus the extent of control. One limitation of this study was that the appropriateness of impulse buying was not investigated, although the countries included are all considered to be "shopping cultures." Many other aspects of culture are also likely to interact with impulsiveness, at least as it has been characterized by Western research, including hedonism, risk avoidance, perceived consequences, and the influence of others. Future research of a qualitative nature is needed to uncover the antecedents and consequences of buying impulsiveness across cultures. It has been suggested (Beatty & Ferrell, 1998) that profiles of highly impulsive shoppers be identified, so that promotions can be targeted at these individuals. Previous research using consumer impulsivity as a lifestyle trait has identified that people vary in their impulse buying susceptibility (Rook, 1987; Rook & Fisher, 1995; Rook & Gardner, 1993). Work in this vein can identify high-, medium-, and low-impulse consumers. Our research suggests that these profiles may in fact be different in other cultures. Further research needs to be conducted into what factors are reliable indicators of impulse buyers in cultures outside of the United States. The marketing factors that encourage impulse purchasing also need renewed attention. It would be useful to investigate in detail how various marketing factors support impulsive purchasing, and which ones exert the strongest influence within different cultural contexts. Access to the World Wide Web may well be an important factor. The Internet most certainly has changed the access to impulse purchasing opportunities for those from more remote areas. The global electronic marketplace is making it increasingly important to study the processes that may differentially affect people from other countries, regions or areas of the world. One future study would be to investigate the interaction of situational variables within different cultural settings and among consumers with different levels of the impulsiveness trait. Our research uncovers another area where scales developed in the United States are not valid for use in other countries, highlighting the difficulty of cross-cultural research. The results of the factor analyses indicate that there may in fact be more than one dimension to the buying impulsiveness trait. We found that the Weun et al. (1998) scale produced better results than the Rook and Fisher (1995) scale, although even this scale had to be modified to achieve equivalence across cultures. Further research needs to be conducted toprovide evidence of the nomonological validity of the trait impulsiveness subscales. This research has the traditional limitations associated with self-report survey research. Using a single-item measure of impulse purchasing may be problematic due to error in the measurement of this construct. Yet, due to the unique nature of impulse buying researchers often rely on single- item self-reports to measure this behavior (e.g., Beatty & Ferrell, 1998; Rook & Fisher, 1995). Our use of two different items in two different investigations of impulsive buying behavior produced the same hypothesized results providing more confidence that measurement error did not produce erroneous or misleading results. One concern is that the cultural differences in impulsive buying behavior that we found were due to cultural biases in response style. Members of Eastern Asian cultures have been shown to use the midpoint in rating scales more than members of Western Caucasian cultures (Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 1995) so it is possible that our Caucasian-individualist respondents were more likely to use the extreme values of the rating scales. However, Chen et al. (1995) found that even when response- style biases due to culture are accounted for, they do not significantly change the outcome of between-group comparisons. Furthermore, no difference was found between the self-reported buying impulsiveness trait levels in each culture. The use of sub-scales could be problematic in capturing all of the aspects of the impulsiveness trait. While this may be problematic in both of our studies, there is some evidence that these sub-scales are highly correlated with the original scale (r< .9). In addition, the sub-scale did not produce different results from the same analysis using the original scale, lending confidence to our findings. Researchers and practitioners need to be aware of cultural differences when applying United States-based research findings to marketing strategies targeting non-United States consumers. Although we surveyed individuals from highly consumer-oriented societies where ample opportunities to engage in impulse purchasing exist, there are essential underlying differences between consumers in Western individualist societies and those in Eastern collectivist cultures. Although the published research on impulsive buying behavior has been helpful in unraveling the impulse buying phenomenon in individualistic societies, this article clearly highlights the impact that culture has on this complex consumer behavior and suggests we need to take into account the interaction of culture and consumers in order to better understand impulsive buying behavior. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Center for International Business, Education and Research at the University of Hawaii and the University of Hawaii RFDC. We thank Sharon Shavitt, Jim Hess, and Rich Lutz for their comments on earlier drafts, the editor and the reviewers for their helpful comments, and Mark Patton for his kind assistance with data collection.