Understanding nature of store ambiance and individual impulse buying tendency on impulsive purchasing behaviour: an emerging market perspective

Abstract

The paper investigates the influence of store ambiance factors like music and light, sales personnel, display and colours, and instore crowd, impulse buying tendency and urge to buy on impulse buying. In the process, this study also validates the scales of these select variables in Indian context. The work has been divided into three parts—the study scales were developed and tested in the Indian context, followed by undertaking of test–retest and establishment of predictive validities in the second and third parts, respectively. The results reveal a positive relationship of shoppers’ impulse buying tendency and urge to buy with impulse buying. Also, two of the store-related environment factors—sales personnel and display and colour schema—have influence on impulsive buying among shoppers. However, contrary to the finding of earlier studies, the present paper noted no role of instore crowd and music and light in triggering and encouraging such behaviour. This contradiction in the findings of this paper is major contribution to the existing literature on antecedents influencing impulsive buying.