Abstract
Research on impulse consumption has been conducted for over seventy years. Scholars have identified four main factors that influence impulse consumption: external stimuli, internal stimuli, contextual and commodity-related factors, and demographic variables and socio-cultural factors. In addition to the above factors, this thesis will explore the mechanisms that influence the stability of impulse consumption from a psychological perspective.
Firstly, TV shopping is often accompanied by impulse consumption. Therefore, the impulse purchase behavior is of great interest to research. Consumer behavior may be related to personal self-importance and purpose of purchase. Individuals with high (vs. low) self-importance perceptions consider themselves (vs. others) to be more important. But are they more likely to consume for themselves (vs. for others)? This leads to a series of research questions: what are the factors that influence impulse consumption in TV shopping? Further, how do these factors influence impulse consumption? What are the psychological mechanisms by which consumers behave in this way? Has this effect always existed and is it not limited to the consumer scenario of TV shopping? These questions have not been answered in the current literature. In order to better answer these questions, this thesis has conducted a series of studies.
Substudy 1 of this thesis initially established a correlation between selfimportance and purpose of purchase (for self vs. for others) and impulse consumption by processing the available data. However, this only provides a small amount of support for the effect of self-importance moderating purpose of purchase on impulse consumption. Because of the phenomenon of possible interaction effects between self-importance and purpose of purchase on purchase intentions. Therefore, substudy 2 of this thesis uses experiments and employs samples from completely different cultures, that is, the results of previous experiments are tested out repeatedly in samples from completely different cultures, substudy 2 of this thesis uses an experiment to examine the interaction between self-importance and purpose of purchase (for oneself vs. for others) and the underlying effect of impulse consumption. At the same time, this researcher replicated the results of previous experiments on a completely different cultural sample, which showed that the effect was cross-cultural ly applicable and stable. Finally, substudy 3 examines the effect of perceived affective value on the basis of successful replication to test out the basic effect and verify the mediating effect. In summary, this thesis systematically explains how self-importance and purpose of purchase influence impulse consumption and their underlying mechanisms through a total of three substudies.
On the theoretical side, this thesis considers the factors that influence impulse consumption from a psychological perspective and focuses on the purchase for oneself behavior, which enriches the study of consumer behavior. Secondly, this thesis investigates the significant indirect effects of perceived emotional value (mediation) and self-importance (high vs. low) in moderating purpose of purchase (for self vs. for others) on impulse consumption, laying the groundwork for further research in the future. From a practical point of view, this thesis is a better integration of practice and academia, which will have a certain degree of inspiration for consumers, businesses and the industry as a whole.