Researchers worldwide have taken a keen interest in impulse buying behavior across the world. Even emerging economies of the world has not been left out of this phenomenon and innumerous studies showcase this trend (Kacen and Lee, 2002, Tuyet Mai et al.
, 2007, Zhou and Wong, 2004, Geetha, Sivakumaran and Sharma, 2010). Behavioral analysts say that there has been an immense increase in impulsive buying all around the world. They feel this sudden and fast increase in impulse purchases may happen to be a part of the socio-cultural transformation associated with changes in consumer purchase behavioral patterns, like that of declining future-oriented, planned buying, and a growth spurt in ‘living in the present’ and impulse buying (Wood,1998). Impulse buying has crossed various eras from being associated with that of the product and planning to product orientation to consumer orientation that includes impulsive buying tendency. During the early days, impulse buying was analogous with unplanned buying (Clover, 1950; West, 1951) that heavily swayed retail sales and profits. Impulse buying was categorized as instore decision making (Stern, 1962), intention-outcome matrix (Kollat & Willet, 1967) and rapidity of decision making (D’Antoni and Shenson, 1973). Later, researchers initiated the required shift in the thought process towards impulse purchase behavior and gave insights that the process of impulse buying was different from the items that were bought impulsively items (Bellenger et al, 1978).
Impulse buying has been defined as a sudden, often powerful and persistent urge to buying items or objects urgently and immediately (Rook, 1987). Rook and Fisher, 1995) demonstrated that impulsive buying was as normative and relative as other purchasing behavior under certain circumstances.Impulse buying is always concomitant to in-store situations and is mediated by pleasure, arousal and sudden urges (Donovan et al. 1994) or affect to some (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998); and is assisted and supported to a great extent by circumstantial variables like availability of money and time (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998). Positive affect instigates impulse purchases and the impact of negative affect is debatable as it increases (Youn and Faber, 2000) or decreases (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998) impulsive purchases in different studies. Impulse purchases or buying behavior is found to exist even in online shopping (Zhang, 2006; Crawford and Melewar, 2003).
Unfortunately, though most studies examining impulse purchase behavior is from the USA, there exist some miniscule researches in other countries like UK (McConatha, Lightner, and Deaner 1994; Dittmar, Beattie, and Eriese 1995), Republic of South Africa (Abratt and Goodey 1990; Bayley and Nancarrow 1998), Malaysia (Shamdasani and Rook 1989); Thailand (Tuyet Mai et al., 2007), People’s Republic of China (Zhou and Wong, 2003). In India, there are very few studies done to study impulsive buying and much rarer in the domain of E-Retail (Duttagupta, 2017).
India has a population of 1.339 billion people. India, the second most populated country in the world, has children as 39% of its total population (According to Childline.org). It can be easily derived from this that they would form a major target market for different products catering to their tastes and preferences. Hence, it’s a no-brainer that product marketers are making aggressive strategies as well as eye-catching advertisements vying for their attention. Children play a crucial and important role in influencing their respective family purchase decisions.
There are different direct and indirect sway that children hold in a family’s purchase decision. Indirect influence is when a parent takes in to account their children’s tastes and preferences while direct influence is when the children’s decisions are bindingly final. Different promotional strategies play a prominent role in molding the purchasing behavior of children. Different advertisements make the children aware about new products and helps in creating a favorable attitude in them towards products. In a research by Information Broadcast Ministry it was found that only 21% children watch kid’s shows or cartoon shows while 79% Indian children watch only general shows along with their families.
This leads to them being much more aware about different products and services available in the market because of the perennial number of advertisements we have nowadays in our television channels. The influenced kids then pester their parents to purchase these products after recalling these products on impulse in different retail outlets.
