Sunday, March 31, 2024

Evaluating the Academic Trend of Impulse Buying Research on Scopus Publications from 1998 to 2022


Abstract

This bibliometric review of research aims to synthesise research trends in the domain of ‘impulse buying’ over the past 25 years. This study utilised extensive bibliometric analysis of articles published in Scopus-indexed journals from 1998 to 2022. It found that research on impulse buying has increased, with over 80% of the relevant documents published since 2013, and most of it in the form of concept papers and empirical research. Despite the low number of publications relating to impulse buying as compared to the publications in other disciplines, it has potential directions for future research.


Introduction

Impulse buying has become the new normal for consumers since the start of the pandemic. Based on Slickdeals’ latest survey of 2,000 US adults, revealed that 64% of them have increased their impulse spending habits in 2022. Currently, on average, a person spends $314 per month on impulse buying, up from $276 in 2021 and $183 in 2020 (Tronier, 2022). The research found that the surveyed shopper admitted to having bought items on impulse, with the most spontaneous purchases being clothing (35%), food and groceries (30%), household items (29%), shoes (28%), and consumer technology (27%) (Slickdeals, 2022). Surprisingly, most shoppers who impulse buy have saved their money because, in their shopper’s community, they help one another to find the best prices at any given time, helping them save their budget. This critical issue of impulse buying among consumers merits further study, especially to understand the trend of this irregular consumer behaviour through bibliometric analysis. Hence, this study aims to synthesise research trends on impulse buying over the past 25 years.

In recent years, consumer buying behaviour research has received massive attention among scholars, and yet it has proven that the number of results in this research area shows dramatic growth. One of the intensifying consumer issues that have been actively debated is impulse buying behaviour, which has affected consumers' financial planning globally. Unexpectedly, the research found that impulse buying tends to increase during inflation, presidential elections, and economic downturns, which later contribute to stronger economic growth (French & Koh, 2023). Hence, the objective of this study is to analyse the growth trajectory and geographic distribution of literature on impulse buying, determine topics in impulse buying research that have received the greatest attention in the literature, and identify the citation metrics from the retrieved documents.


Literature Review

Impulse buying is defined as an action that is unplanned spontaneous, and involves the purchase of items for which there was no previously identified need (Sohn & Ko, 2021). Impulsive behaviour is caused by an inability to evaluate its consequences and an irresistible urge to purchase (Rodrigues, Lopes & Varela, 2021). By acquiring and possessing material goods, consumers attempt to restore their degraded, uncertain, threatened selves. Despite being aware of the negative effects of non-intentional buying, there is a strong desire to satisfy consumer’s pressing needs (Meena, 2018).


The history of impulse buying dates back to the year 1950, when researchers focused on products versus consumers and analysed different retail environments (Applebaum, 1951; Clover, 1950). Impulse buying has been studied from several perspectives, namely the effects of advertising on consumer behaviour, emotional resources, rational processes, persuasive communication, and the cognitive currents arising from the theory of social judgment (Malter et al., 2020).


Recent years have seen a burgeoning literature on impulse buying among researchers in terms of the influence of product’s hedonic appeal, shopping enjoyment, and interactive advertising screen on impulse buying (Lord et al., 2023; Moes et al., 2022; Sharma, 2021). Some researchers measured the influence of livestreaming (i.e., online promotion) on impulsive consumption in the gastronomy industry (Yu et al., 2022) while others measured conscious and unconscious impulse buying during emergencies such as pandemics (COVID-19) (Nigam et al., 2022). However, Kursan Milaković and Ahmad (2023) investigate impulse buying among online users in two distinct countries and recommend that future research be conducted on various product categories. Consequently, these observations about the emergence of impulse buying as a field of study structure this bibliometric review of research.


Bibliometric analysis is known as “the application of mathematics and statistical methods to books and other media of communication” (Pritchard, 1969). Bibliometric studies have been used to evaluate the quantity and quality of published documents to observe the trend or pattern of a specific research area. Bibliometric analysis is a rigorous method for analysing large volumes of scientific data. The importance of bibliometric analysis is reflected in its utility for producing high research impact and handling large volumes of scientific data (Donthu et al., 2020).

This study employs this approach to provide a holistic perspective on impulse buying. In addition, academics interested in impulse buying literature can use this study as a reference in the future. The analysis spanning the past 25 years enables researchers to examine patterns of past studies based on historical data. As a result, it forecasted the visibility of topics and the future development of literature. For instance, previous researchers utilised bibliometric analysis within 25 years (i.e., from 1999 to 2021) to investigate sustainable consumption behaviour (Vergura et al., 2023) and within 46 years (i.e., from 1976 to 2022) to analyse business sustainability (Dima et al., 2022). In addition, researchers can analyse the critical issues related to impulse buying over the past 25 years based on the publication’s details, such as authors, keyword frequency, citation analysis, and geographical distributions.


Method


This study employs bibliometric analysis to examine the expansion and production of studies on impulsive buying behaviour. To achieve the objective of this study, data from the Scopus database was obtained. The Scopus index, which was chosen as the data repository, was the source of the documents. Using empirical data, comparisons reveal that, outside of the medical and physical sciences, Scopus's coverage of sources is broader than Web of Science's (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019). The review included journal articles, books, book chapters, and conference papers to provide comprehensive coverage of the topic. The Scopus search commenced without a start date, allowing the database to locate the earliest papers possible.

On February 8, 2023, the search query "impulse buying" was applied to the article title in the Scopus database. This search yielded a total of 698 documents for further examination. As part of the data sets, the data has been exported in CSV and RIS formats. To analyse the gathered documents, Microsoft Excel, VOSviewer, and Harzing's Publish and Perish software were utilised. The review adopted PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines for conducting systematic reviews of research. The search string “impulse buying” was entered into the Scopus search engine. This initial search yielded 698 documents.

After the time frame was applied, the database was reduced to 668 documents. Additional documents were excluded based on the document type. For example, retracted and undefined documents were eliminated at this stage. After the screening of documents was completed, the final database included 666 documents on impulse buying. The 'data' analysed for this study were bibliographic descriptions of the 666 Scopus-indexed documents. This 'meta-data' included the document authors' names, titles, publication dates, and author affiliations, as well as an abundance of citation information. Utilising descriptive statistics, trend analyses regarding the growth and geography of the impulse buying literature were conducted. Besides, we utilised VOSviewer software to synthesise patterns of knowledge production in impulse-buying literature.


Conclusion

In conclusion, this study demonstrates bibliometric analysis as a scientific method to reflect on the expansive fields of business research to provide new insights to evaluate the academic trend of impulse buying research. The results of the bibliometric analysis reveal a comprehensive picture of trending topics for discussing future trends of impulse buying through a data repository. Moreover, the growth trajectory of this literature suggests that it will more than double it size over the next decade.

The limitation of the study is that the data sources used are restricted to Scopus. Future studies can supplement other pertinent data sources such as the Web of Sciences, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and others to get a holistic view of this topic. Future studies can provide a more detailed and comprehensive analysis of the trend of impulse buying and formulate several specific contexts to facilitate the development of studies on impulse buying. Additionally, meta-analytical review approaches are also suitable to help future research achieve a better understanding and clearer vision of the results of the present study.

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