Resumen de Looking beyond impulse buying: : a cross-cultural and multi-domain investigation of consumer impulsiveness
Piyush Sharma, Bharadhwaj Sivakumaran, Roger Marshall
Purpose - Prior research on consumer impulsiveness (CI) focuses on the impulse buying context and does not establish the cross-cultural invariance of the CI scale. This paper conceptualizes CI as a global trait to explore its influence on a wider range of consumer behaviours and also presents a revised CI scale.
Design/methodology/approach - Two studies with undergraduate and MBA students in Singapore, UK and US were used to develop the revised CI scale and to test its cross-cultural measurement invariance and predictive validity.
Findings - Consumer impulsiveness is a three-dimensional construct with cognitive (imprudence), affective (self-indulgence), and behavioural (lack of self-control) dimensions. However, self-indulgence and lack of self-control positively (do not) correlate for consumers with independent (interdependent) self-concepts. These three dimensions also vary in their influence on different types of self-regulatory failures.
Research limitations/implications - The student participants used in all the studies may be relatively younger and better educated compared to average consumers. Hence, there is a need to test the revised CI scale with diverse consumer populations.
Practical implications - The revised CI scale would help future researchers study the influence of consumer impulsiveness across diverse cultures and self-regulatory failures in a reliable and rigorous manner.
Originality/value - This paper extends the scope of consumer impulsiveness beyond impulse buying to study its impact on self-regulatory failure across five diverse behavioural domains (driving, eating, entertainment, shopping, and substance abuse).
