Investigating Impulse Buying and Variety Seeking: Towards a General Theory of Hedonic Purchase Behaviors

Abstract

Impulse buying (IB) and variety seeking (VS) are both quite prevalent among today’s consumers influencing their day-to-day judgments and decision-making, making their study significant and relevant to the study of modern consumer’s behavior for academic researchers as well as marketing practitioners (Kacen and Lee 2002; Ratner and Kahn 2002). Both these behaviors are also classified as hedonic purchase behaviors influenced by feelings rather than logical thinking and motivated by psychosocial needs rather than functional benefits (Baumgartner 2002). However, despite these similarities on one hand and importance for practitioners on the other, there is almost no published empirical research investigating VS in conjunction with IB, which may have probably supported a general theory of hedonic purchase behaviors. This gap is addressed in this study by investigating the association of several relevant traits with both these behaviors, using an experimental approach.