This essay is going to explain and discuss the understanding of impulse purchasing as a highly emotional and reactive process

in consumer buyer behaviuor and how it can be used in marketing campaigns and strategies. Impulse buying could be defined as an unplanned purchase and as an act of freedom.The most common definition of impulse buying is desire a strong emotion which weakens the need. Impulse buying accounts for almost 80% of purchases in some product categories and shopping is a major leisure and lifestyle activity in many countries Emotions and feelings plays a vital role in impulse buying similarly exposure to the well crafted presentation of the product.These impulse purchases ranges from the small daily consumption products such as chocolates, alcohol ,cigarettes to the large products such as cars,work of arts but a large percentage results in negative feelings and disappointments from various sources.According to Rook impulse buying occurs:when a consumer experience a sudden,often powerful and persistent urge to buy something immediately.The impulse to buy is hedonically complex and may stimulate emotional conflict.Also,impulse buying is prone to occur with diminished regard to its consequences.(Engel,1995,pp.239)Impulse buying could be described with the following characteristics: -spontaneity appears unexpectedly and often motivates the customer to buy immediately usually when they he/she see the product. -power, compulsion and intensity motivate the consumer to put everything aside and buy the product. -excitement and stimulation are sudden urges to buy and they could be characterized as wild or exciting -disregard for consequences is when the need to buy is irresistible and the consequences of the impulse purchase are ignored. According to Engel and Blackwell(1982) consumers process information in five steps before making purchase.The first step involves problem or need recognition.The next step involves a search for alternative solutions and relevant information about potential solution to a problem from either the external environment or from knowledge memory.The third step include evaluation of the

alternatives in terms of salient beliefs about relevant consequences.The forth step is to determine the purchase of the chosen alternative.Finally the post-purchase step is reevaluation of chosen alternatives.How people making choices for their purchases is affected by the type of decision making process in which they are involved.The choice process is determined as high-involvement or lowinvolvement.In low-involvement consumers use noncompensatory models of choice and in high-involvement conditions consumers use compensatory models.During decision making involvement is high or low and involvement is a definite conception and its power is different among people.High involvement happens when a person anticipates the purchase that have a personal relation to it and there is a high risk about it.Car,washing machine,house are valuable items which purchase rarely and create many involvements.Consumer spend much time to search for buying and the reason is to increase risk as much as possible and collect information about it.Low involvement is low mental involvement in relation to purchasing a product.For items with low price such as coffee,sweets,washing products which purchase repeatedly there is no need to collect information or to put emphasis on it. Nowadays online shopping is the fastest growing channel of shopping because of its convenience and variety of goods.Online shoppers are more likely to make impulse purchases without consideration to consequences than non-online shoppers(Donthu and Garcia,1999).Online shopping offer convenient way to buy many products(books,clothes,CDs,etc) from your home just with a few clicks and is available 24 hours 7 days a week.Some web sites like Amazon offer next day delivery free of charge and the product can be return within 14 days if the consumer is not fully satisfied with the purchase.Sales,promotions,gifts,discounts encourage online shoppers to make impulsive purchases.Also the possibility to use credit cards make the consumers to buy impulsively(Dittmar and Drury,200;Rook and Fisher,1995). In order to attract more customers and keep old ones to shop continuously retailers have to renew their web site in regular basis,improve products and offer good quality goods with reasonable prices.Impulse buying is extraordinary and emotional act that consumer perform without regard to financial or other consequences.Impulse buyers express feelings like excitement,,satisfaction and joy without thinking about financial consequences of the purchase(Weinberg and Gottwals,1982).Promotional factors in supermarkets have great influence among the shoppers.Going to the supermarket with shopping list is considered to be planned shopping but according to Rook and Fisher(1995) and (Shoham and Brencin,2003) shoppers with shopping list also make unplanned purchases. Also

planned impulse buying occurs when shopper enter the store with some specific products in mind and without intention to buy some other products depends from stores promotional strategy(Stern,1962)Promotions like buy one get one free or buy one get the second one half price tempt the consumers to buy more products even if it is not urgent in the shopping list.Club cards which allow consumers to collect points and later to be redeemed and vouchers issued after you spend certain amount in the grocery shop are good marketing strategies to make customers to shop more.Nowadays there are many advertisements on television,radio and on newspapers.This advertising has high impact the society especially on the younger generation.People are straight to believe in what they hear and see every day especially if its shown in the glamorous and attractive way.Thus often many people buy things that they actually dont need.Yet for some others advertising helps to choose what they need to buy and come to know from where they could buy it.Its well known that ads boosts the sales of goods and encourage people to buy unnecessarily and impulsively.Some advertising campaigns make use of popular singers,actors to advertise their products.Rook and Gardener(1993) found that impulsive buying could be influenced by positive or negative mood state.Based on these results Verplanken(2005) define impulse buying as a self regulatory mechanism aimed at reducing negative feelings,especially when these feelings have a structural basis as a failure to live up to valued standards or low self-esteem(pp.430-431).Impulse buying is often classified in the context of a shopping environment there is also strong evidence how individuals buy on impulse. Impulse buying measure two aspects of general impulse buying tendencies:a cognitive aspect is related to lack of planning with association in purchase decision and a effective which associate with feeling of excitement and overpowering urges to buy. Individuals who have strong impulse buying tendencies are low in conscientiousness,autonomy,personal need for structure and need to evaluate but are high on extraversion and action orientation.Cnsumers use store layout as external memory aid and the fact that consumers can even plan impulse purchases.Impulse purchases describe a significant segment of sales which confirms that impulse buying is a key subject to both retailers and the retail industry.Impulse buying largely depend on resources such as money,time,physical and mental effort.There are many variables which stimulate impulse purchases behaviour.For example retail settings,like manifestation of products,display of products or the internal environment like a nice smell,pretty and attractive colors or pleasant and slow music.Such emotional factors create a centre of attention elicit purchase motives or leads to positive mood states and mainly significant during in store browsing.In store browsing may lead to positive feeling and an urge to buy which are both characteristics of impulse purchases.Other situational variables that influence impulse buying are available time and money.There are two main

elements which differentiate impulse buying from non impulse buying.First impulse purchases are typically made unplanned and without a recognized buying intention before entering the store.Second impulse purchases almost always involve an emotional response either before at the time or after the impulse purchase.Impulse buying behaviour regarding fashion and personality goods are associated with patterns like chaste,repeated emotions as well as fashion-orientated impulse buying behaviour.Consumer behaviour is the decision process and physical activity individual engage in when evaluating,acquiring,using or disposing of goods and services.Products are classified into the following categories.The consumers make buying decisions according to nature of the product,environment and with respect to their physiological as well as financial conditions.Covenience products are relatively inexpensive, frequently purchased items for which buyers want to exert only minimal purchasing effort.Examples include bread,newspapers,soft drinks.The buyers spent little time either in planning the purchase of a convenience item in comparing available brands or sellers.Even a buyer who prefers a certain brand will readily choose a substitute if the preferred brand is not conveniently available.Shopping products are items for which buyers are willing to spend considerable effort in planning and making the purchase.Buyers allocate considerable time for comparing stores and brands with respect to prices,product features,qualities,services and perhaps warranties. Impulse purchasing occurs when consumers experience truly impulsive buying, the novelty or escape purchase which breaks a normal buying pattern.Consumers attempt to controls their impulsive emotions since they do not want to be considered immature or irrational. Recent studies also imply that although negative normative evaluations of the phenomenon exist, consumers actually do not feel bad about performing such behavior.Involvement as well as personality traits including lack of self-control, stress, and absorption were also related to the consumers propensity to involve in impulsive buying behavior. Impulse buying has been of theoretical and practical significance and it should be distinguished that the motivations for such behavior may be quite diverse. For example, there is difference between reminder impulse buying (a shopper remembers the need for an essential item by seeing it in the store) and pure impulse buying (a purchase that breaks the buying normal pattern). In psychology, the cognitive approach places impulse buying within the framework of impulse control in general. Impulse control improves with development stage. Differences between shoppers are of great interest to marketers because then they can better target consumers. As such, gender is often considered as a good source for investigation. It has been thought that womens behavior in general is more emotional and psychologically rooted than men. This implies that women are more susceptible to impulse purchasing. Moreover, women tend to have a higher propensity to shop than men which also

explains the impulse purchases. Emotions being the main driver of impulsive buying behavior have been the subject of debates in terms of terminology. Scientists use the term affect as a general category that encompasses emotions, moods and attitudes. The mental state of readiness that arises from cognitive appraisals of events or thoughts is what characterizes emotions. The line between emotions and mood is difficult to be drawn. It is often said that mood is longer lasting and lower in intensity than an emotion. Other researches add to this that emotions are typically intentional while mood is generally non-intentional and global. Attitudes are often considered instances of affect. Some authors define them as evaluative judgments rather than emotional states. Most consumers refer to impulsive buying as simply a sudden urge to buy something. This implies several important aspects. The buying impulse is unexpected arises spontaneously. Psychological impulses stimulate a desire to act immediately and the feeling of having to possess something instantly. This may also lead to feelings of despair, compulsion and obsession. The variety and high level of excitement that is attributed to impulsive buying is what distinguishes it from rational consumption behavior. Some consumers even recognize the disruptive force and the extraordinary stimulation that can induce feelings of being out-of-control. The intense feelings states that accompany this type of behavior range from good, happy, wonderful, high to down, frivolous and even panic and sick. The emotions influencing the type of behavior such as impulsive buying include families of related states that are characterized by common theme. Joy is often considered almost the same as happiness and has common features just like other high-arousal positive emotions as amusement. Joy can be aimless and at the same tome can constitute readiness to engage in action. Interest is often used interchangeably with curiosity, intrigue, excitement, and has things in common with challenge and intrinsic motivation. Some researches doubt whether interest can be categorized as a basic emotion but in fact it the emotion experienced most frequently. Interest generates a feeling of desire for investigation, involvement, and expanding the self. The mindset of this emotion is characterized by openness to new ideas, experiences and actions. Love is often thought of not being a single emotion but rather people experience varieties of love. Love experiences are made up of many positive emotions like joy, interest.

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