Self-Indulgence or Loss of Self-Control? Or, is it a Bit of Both? Investigating Cross-cultural Aspects of Impulse Buying Behavior

Abstract

Impulse buying is considered an important and widespread phenomenon by consumer researchers as well as marketing practitioners in the US and other western countries and it has been considered largely universal in nature (Beatty and Ferrell 1998; Hausman 2000; Rook and Fisher 1995). However, recent research has highlighted the need to explore the cultural context of consumer behavior to help the marketers understand and capitalize on cross-cultural differences in an increasingly globalized marketplace (Maheswaran and Shavitt 2000). In this context, some researchers have begun to investigate impulse buying behavior in other countries besides US such as Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam (Kacen and Lee 2002; Nguyen et al. 2003). On the other hand, there is also a growing demand to establish measurement equivalence for scales developed with the US consumers before using these in countries outside the US (Sharma and Weathers 2003; Steenkamp and Baumgartner 1998). Unfortunately, most cross-cultural studies into impulse buying used scales did not adhere to the suggested methods to demonstrate measurement equivalence, despite using scales developed in the US among their non-US subjects. Hence, there is still no conclusive evidence to support the assumption that impulse buying has the same meaning and implications across cultures.