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Is
Impulse
Concept
Purchasing Really
for
RONALD P. WILLETT
Impulse purchasing is an
importantaspect of customer in-store behavior as discussed in the previous article. The authors of this
paper indicate that the concept, as presentlyemployed,
has limited usefulness as a
basis for marketing decisions. They outlinethe problems marketers must confront in order to make the
unplanned purchasing concept operationalfor marketing decisions.
Vol.
Useful
Marketing Decisions?
DAVID T. KOLLAT
and
Journal of Marketing,
1969), pp. 79-83.
33 (January,
79
80
ferential promotion treatment of items. Certain
store layouts, product locations, shelf locations, and
types of displays are apparently thought to be more
conducive to and consistent with unplanned purchasing than are others. Unplanned purchasing is
Packaging and
also of interest to manufacturers.
are based, in
decisions
allegedly
point-of-purchase
part, on a product's present or potential rate of
unplanned purchasing.10
Thus, the importance and relevance of unplanned
purchasing is apparently widely recognized and acHowever, is the concept really a useful
cepted.
basis for the types of marketing decisions that have
been mentioned above? This article discusses four
basic problems with unplanned purchasing that
severely limit its usefulness for marketing decisions.
First, the concept is too vague and encompasses too
many types of behavior to be an operational criterion
measured unfor marketing decisions.
Second,
planned purchasing rates may be exaggerated because of the methodology used to generate them,
and may distort the potential for increasing products' sales by manipulation of in-store location and
display. Third, present measures of unplanned purchasing rates are misleading bases for selecting
products for differential promotional treatments.
Fourth, unplanned purchase rates for individual
brands may differ significantly from the parent
product category rate, thereby deceiving both retailers and manufacturers.
The Problems
of Definition
in Taylor Meloanand Charles Whitlo (editors), Competition in Marketing (Los Angeles: Graduate School
of Business, University of Southern California, 1964),
p. 78.
1William R. Davidson and Alton F. Doody, Retailing
Management (New York: The Ronald Press Company,
1966), p. 180.
12Saul Nesbitt, "Today's Housewives Plan Menus as
They Shop," Nesbitt Associates Release, 1959, p. 2-3.
(3) There is no such thing as an impulse purchase. Rather, there are four types of unplanned purchases: (1) Pure impulse is a
novelty or escape purchase which breaks a
normal buying pattern, (2) Reminder impulse
occurs when a shopper sees an item or recalls an advertisement or other information
and remembers that the stock at home is low
or exhausted, (3) Suggestion impulse purchasing occurs when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes a need
for it, and (4) Planned impulse purchasing
takes place when the shopper makes specific
purchase decisions on the basis of price specials, coupon offers, and the like.13
Field studies of unplanned purchasing
ployed still other operational definitions.
lowing are illustrative:
(4)
(5) Impulse purchasing is the difference in purchases between a sample of customers reporting actual purchases (exposed to in-store
stimuli) and another sample of customers reporting what they anticipated buying while
13Hawkins Stern, "The Significance of Impulse Buying
Today,"
JOURNAL
OF MARKETING,
Vol. 26 (April,
1962), p. 59.
14 Same reference as footnote 7, p. 2.
Impulse Purchasing
Purchasing Really
Is Impulse
Really a Useful Concept for Marketing Decisions?
sitting in their living rooms (not exposed to
in-store stimuli).15
(6) Impulse purchasing is the difference in a
store's sales volume during weeks in which
a holiday occurred with the week immediately
following during which a holiday did not
occur.16
From the above, it appears that there are considerable differences of opinion as to what is meant
by an impulse purchase.17 Conceptual definitions
differ not only in degrees of precision but, more
basically, in terms of the amount and type of decision making that is involved, and, by implication,
the susceptibility of the behavior to marketer strategies. Similarly, there is considerable variation in
the way in which impulse purchasing is empirically
defined. Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
there are conspicuous differences between conceptual
and empirical definitions.
The lack of consensus about the meaning of impulse purchasing would seem to limit the usefulness
of the concept. The different definitions used in
empirical studies make it difficult to compare findings and accumulate information about the nature
of the behavior. Moreover, the marketing implications of impulse buying sometimes vary according
to which definition is adopted. For example, if
definition (1) is accepted, it may be advantageous
to periodically relocate products having high unplanned purchasing rates in order to increase customer exposure.
In contrast, if definition (2) is
accepted, this strategy may not be desirable particularly if the location(s) is inconsistent with where
shoppers typically look for the product (s).
Finally, and perhaps most basic, it is questionable
whether intelligent
marketing decisions can be
made about how to influence unplanned purchasing
when there is so little agreement about what the
phenomenon is or what it involves. That is, how
can profitable strategies be devised when the objective-to
influence impulse purchasing-is
so poorly
defined ?
Impulse Purchasing-Fact
or Artifact?
There are differences of opinion about why impulse purchasing occurs. Two conflicting explanations are: (1) the exposure to in-store stimuli
and (2)
hypothesis;
the customer-commitment
hypothesis.
15James D. Schaffer, "The Influence of Impulse Buying
or In-the-Store Decisions on Consumer Food Purchases" (Journal paper no. 2591 from the Michigan
Agricultural Experimental Station).
16Same reference as footnote 3, p. 68.
17For other definitions of impulse purchasing, see How
People Shop for Food (Market Research Corporation
of America, undated manuscript); One On The Aisle
(New York: Life Marketing Laboratory, undated
manuscript); and Impulse Buying (Philadelphia: The
Curtis Publishing Company Research Department,
February, 1952).
81
81
Journal of Marketing,
1969
Journal
Marketing, January,
January, 1969
82
promoted, and the customer who selectively exposes
himself to, and selectively perceives, the promotional
stimuli. If in-store stimuli do not precipitate all
unplanned purchasing, then it follows that other
factors must be causing some of this type of
behavior.
The Customer-commitment
Hypothesis
of purchase
Second, the shopper may know what she will purchase but may be unable to relate these intentions
regardless of the amount of assistance given by the
interviewer. That is, without exposure to in-store
stimuli, the shopper may be unable to construct
cognitively and verbalize for the interviewer what
she will purchase.
The logic underlying the customer-commitment
hypothesis was alluded to nearly two decades ago.23
The hypothesis was also deduced from a recent study
of the unplanned purchasing behavior of 600 supermarket shoppers.24 Since the hypothesis was a byproduct rather than an objective of the study, it
was not possible to determine the amount of un23 William Applebaum, "Studying
24
Customer Behavior
in Retail Stores," JOURNAL OF MARKETING, Vol. 16
(October, 1951), pp. 172-178, p. 178.
83