Impulse purchase

In the field of consumer behavior, an impulse purchase or impulse buying is an unplanned decision by a consumer to buy a product or service, made just before a purchase. One who tends to make such purchases is referred to as an impulse purchaser, impulse buyer, or compulsive buyer. Research findings suggest that emotions, feelings, and attitudes play a decisive role in purchasing, triggered by seeing the product or upon exposure to a well crafted promotional message. The original definition of an "impulse purchase" was a purchase that unplanned by the consumer that came out of the DuPont Consumer Buying Habits Study that occurred from 1948 to 1965. The definition of impulse buying was then updated, referring to the intense urge that a consumer feels when they want to buy an item right then, often causing cognitive dissonance for the consumer. This changed the focus of definition from the product to the consumer. From there, it has been expressed that impulse purchases are the result of one's own need to satisfy their wants in competition with their own rational and self-regulatory ideologies. An increase in impulse purchases has also been linked to the rise of materialism, which often causes people to splurge or make uninformed purchases. In his article titled, The Significance of Impulse Buying Today, Sid Hawkins Stern describes the four different types of impulse purchases that can be seen. The first is called "Pure Impulse Buying" where the consumer breaks their normal pattern of consumption. The next is called "Reminder Impulse Buying," which is when a consumer forgets to add an item to their shopping list, and when they see the item in the store, they remember that they need the item and purchase it. The third type of impulse purchase is "Suggestion Impulse Buying" where a consumer sees a product they have never seen before, and convinces themselves that they need the item even though this is their initial encounter with it. The last type of impulse purchase that Stern includes is "Planned Impulse Buying.