Importance of impulse buying behaior in contemporary retail settings

Abstract

Impulse buying is an unplanned or spontaneous decision to buy a product or service upon sudden exposure to the stimulus provided by the product/service. Such buying behaviour depends on various factors such as consumer demography, personality traits, propensity to buy, amount of disposable income, store characteristics, product size and features etc. There has been an increasing trend which can be seen in the current market settings wherein more and more people give in to the impulse buying. But there seems to be lacunae in terms of due effort and importance being given by the marketers to this growing phenomenon in driving up their sales. In majority of the cases, since identification of impulse buying becomes a very difficult proposition, coming up with targeted marketing strategies to drive purchases through this route becomes a challenge.