Is Impulse Purchasing Really a Useful Concept for Marketing Decisions?

Author(s): David T. Kollat and Ronald P. Willett

Source: Journal of Marketing, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), pp. 79-83
Published by: American Marketing Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1248750 .
Accessed: 15/10/2014 16:03
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

American Marketing Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Journal of Marketing.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 111.68.103.163 on Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:03:30 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Is

Impulse

Concept

Purchasing Really
for

RONALD P. WILLETT

Impulse purchasing is an
importantaspect of customer in-store behavior as discussed in the previous article. The authors of this
paper indicate that the concept, as presentlyemployed,
has limited usefulness as a
basis for marketing decisions. They outlinethe problems marketers must confront in order to make the
unplanned purchasing concept operationalfor marketing decisions.
Vol.

Useful

Marketing Decisions?

DAVID T. KOLLAT
and

Journal of Marketing,
1969), pp. 79-83.

33 (January,

IT MPULSE" or "unplanned" purchasing is a familiar term to

most business executives and marketing academicians.1
Indeed, it is common to refer to certain products as "impulse items"
and/or to "account for" certain kinds of behavior by classifying
it as impulse purchasing.
Unplanned purchasing is, of course, not confined to any product
or retail setting. The phenomenon has been used to describe purchases of such products as durable goods,2 jewelry, wearing apparel, hardware items, furniture,3 drugs and toiletries4 and grocery
products.5
Moreover, the behavior has been found to occur in
such retail settings as drugstores,6 supermarkets,7 department
stores, and variety and specialty stores including gift shops, florists, book, barber, hardware, auto supply, lumber and furniture
stores.8
While the above studies indicate that unplanned purchasing occurs in many types of retail outlets, it is most commonly studied
in supermarkets.
The importance of this type of behavior in this
retail setting is "documented" by the latest du Pont study, which
indicates that unplanned purchasing accounts for 50% of the products purchased in food supermarkets.9
Several kinds of retailers, particularly supermarket executives
and managers, allegedly use unplanned purchasing as a criterion
for decisions about merchandise location, space allocation and dif1 As used in this paper, "impulse" and "unplanned" are synonymous.
George Katona and Eva Mueller, "A Study of Purchase Decisions,"
in Lincoln Clark, editor, The Dynamics of Consumer Reactions (New
York: New York University Press, 1955), pp. 30-88.
3 Vernon T. Clover, "Relative Importance of
Impulse Buying in Retail
Stores," JOURNAL OF MARKETING, Vol. 25 (July, 1950), pp. 66-70.
4Drugstore Brand Switching and Impulse Buying (New York: Point
of Purchase Advertising Institute, 1963).
5 Consumer Buying Habits Studies (E. I. du Pont de Nemours and
Co.,
1945, 1949, 1954, 1959, 1965) ; C. John West, "Results of Two Years
of Study into Impulse Buying," JOURNAL OF MARKETING, Vol. 15
(January, 1951), pp. 362-363; Hawkins Stern, "The Significance of
Impulse Buying Today," JOURNAL OF MARKETING, Vol. 26 (April,
1962), pp. 59-62; and James D. Schaffer, "The Influence of Impulse
Buying or In-the-Store Decisions on Consumer Food Purchases"
(Journal paper no. 2591 from the Michigan Agricultural Experimental Station).
6 Same reference as footnote
4, p. 19.
7 Consumer Buying Habits Studies (E. I. du Pont de Nemours and
Co.,
1965), pp. 3-4.
8 Same reference as footnote 3, p. 67.
9 Same reference as footnote 7.
2

79

This content downloaded from 111.68.103.163 on Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:03:30 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Journal of Marketing, January, 1969

80
ferential promotion treatment of items. Certain
store layouts, product locations, shelf locations, and
types of displays are apparently thought to be more
conducive to and consistent with unplanned purchasing than are others. Unplanned purchasing is
Packaging and
also of interest to manufacturers.
are based, in
decisions
allegedly
point-of-purchase
part, on a product's present or potential rate of
unplanned purchasing.10
Thus, the importance and relevance of unplanned
purchasing is apparently widely recognized and acHowever, is the concept really a useful
cepted.
basis for the types of marketing decisions that have
been mentioned above? This article discusses four
basic problems with unplanned purchasing that
severely limit its usefulness for marketing decisions.
First, the concept is too vague and encompasses too
many types of behavior to be an operational criterion
measured unfor marketing decisions.
Second,
planned purchasing rates may be exaggerated because of the methodology used to generate them,
and may distort the potential for increasing products' sales by manipulation of in-store location and
display. Third, present measures of unplanned purchasing rates are misleading bases for selecting
products for differential promotional treatments.
Fourth, unplanned purchase rates for individual
brands may differ significantly from the parent
product category rate, thereby deceiving both retailers and manufacturers.
The Problems

of Definition

Since unplanned purchasing is a widely recognized

and frequently talked about type of behavior, it
would seem logical to expect some consensus about
the meaning of the phenomenon. Actually, this is
not the case, for the term is used in many different
ways. The following are illustrative of the variety
of conceptual definitions:
(1) An impulse purchase is an unplanned, spur
of the moment decision to purchase a product."l
(2) An impulse purchase is a logical and efficient way of making purchase decisions, since
by waiting until one is in the store to finalize purchase intentions, a more comprehensive and realistic evaluation of purchase
alternatives can often be made.12
10 Bert C. McCammon, Jr., "The Role of Point-of-Pur-

chase Display in the Manufacturer's Marketing Mix,"

in Taylor Meloanand Charles Whitlo (editors), Competition in Marketing (Los Angeles: Graduate School
of Business, University of Southern California, 1964),
p. 78.
1William R. Davidson and Alton F. Doody, Retailing
Management (New York: The Ronald Press Company,
1966), p. 180.
12Saul Nesbitt, "Today's Housewives Plan Menus as
They Shop," Nesbitt Associates Release, 1959, p. 2-3.

(3) There is no such thing as an impulse purchase. Rather, there are four types of unplanned purchases: (1) Pure impulse is a
novelty or escape purchase which breaks a
normal buying pattern, (2) Reminder impulse
occurs when a shopper sees an item or recalls an advertisement or other information
and remembers that the stock at home is low
or exhausted, (3) Suggestion impulse purchasing occurs when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualizes a need
for it, and (4) Planned impulse purchasing
takes place when the shopper makes specific
purchase decisions on the basis of price specials, coupon offers, and the like.13
Field studies of unplanned purchasing
ployed still other operational definitions.
lowing are illustrative:
(4)

have emThe fol-

Shoppers are questioned upon entering the

store as to what they plan to purchase and
records are made of what they do in fact purchase. Those items purchased but not mentioned during the first interview are impulse
purchases.14

(5) Impulse purchasing is the difference in purchases between a sample of customers reporting actual purchases (exposed to in-store
stimuli) and another sample of customers reporting what they anticipated buying while
13Hawkins Stern, "The Significance of Impulse Buying

Today,"

JOURNAL

OF MARKETING,

Vol. 26 (April,

1962), p. 59.
14 Same reference as footnote 7, p. 2.

* ABOUT THE AUTHORS. David T.

Kollat is an Associate Professor of Marketing at The Ohio State University. Dr.
Kollat has published articles in the Journal of Marketing Research, the Proceedings of the American Marketing Association, and has been a contributor to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. He is coauthor of Consumer Behavior and Cases
in Consumer Behavior and is also a coauthor of a forthcoming book Research
in Consumer Behavior.
i Z
Ronald P. Willett is Associate Professor of Marketing and Assistant Chairman, Marketing Department, Indiana
University. He holds BS and MBA degrees from Miami University (Oxford)
and his DBA is from Indiana University.
Dr. Willett is currently Director of the
Pharmacists Buying Behavior Study and
Co-director of the Family Behavior Research Project at Indiana University.
His articles have appeared in the JOURNAL OF MARKETING and the Journal of Marketing Research.

This content downloaded from 111.68.103.163 on Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:03:30 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Impulse Purchasing
Purchasing Really
Is Impulse
Really a Useful Concept for Marketing Decisions?
sitting in their living rooms (not exposed to
in-store stimuli).15
(6) Impulse purchasing is the difference in a
store's sales volume during weeks in which
a holiday occurred with the week immediately
following during which a holiday did not
occur.16
From the above, it appears that there are considerable differences of opinion as to what is meant
by an impulse purchase.17 Conceptual definitions
differ not only in degrees of precision but, more
basically, in terms of the amount and type of decision making that is involved, and, by implication,
the susceptibility of the behavior to marketer strategies. Similarly, there is considerable variation in
the way in which impulse purchasing is empirically
defined. Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
there are conspicuous differences between conceptual
and empirical definitions.
The lack of consensus about the meaning of impulse purchasing would seem to limit the usefulness
of the concept. The different definitions used in
empirical studies make it difficult to compare findings and accumulate information about the nature
of the behavior. Moreover, the marketing implications of impulse buying sometimes vary according
to which definition is adopted. For example, if
definition (1) is accepted, it may be advantageous
to periodically relocate products having high unplanned purchasing rates in order to increase customer exposure.
In contrast, if definition (2) is
accepted, this strategy may not be desirable particularly if the location(s) is inconsistent with where
shoppers typically look for the product (s).
Finally, and perhaps most basic, it is questionable
whether intelligent
marketing decisions can be
made about how to influence unplanned purchasing
when there is so little agreement about what the
phenomenon is or what it involves. That is, how
can profitable strategies be devised when the objective-to
influence impulse purchasing-is
so poorly
defined ?
Impulse Purchasing-Fact
or Artifact?
There are differences of opinion about why impulse purchasing occurs. Two conflicting explanations are: (1) the exposure to in-store stimuli
and (2)
hypothesis;
the customer-commitment
hypothesis.
15James D. Schaffer, "The Influence of Impulse Buying
or In-the-Store Decisions on Consumer Food Purchases" (Journal paper no. 2591 from the Michigan
Agricultural Experimental Station).
16Same reference as footnote 3, p. 68.
17For other definitions of impulse purchasing, see How
People Shop for Food (Market Research Corporation
of America, undated manuscript); One On The Aisle
(New York: Life Marketing Laboratory, undated
manuscript); and Impulse Buying (Philadelphia: The
Curtis Publishing Company Research Department,
February, 1952).

81
81

The Exposure Hypothesis

According to this hypothesis, exposure to in-store
stimuli produces unplanned purchases because: (1)
shoppers use product assortments and other in-store
stimuli to remind them of their shopping needs;
that is, shoppers make some purchase decisions in
the store rather than relying solely on a shopping
list; and/or (2) in-store promotional techniques
result in shoppers recognizing new ways of satisfying needs.
Several studies have indicated that in-store stimuli can trigger unplanned purchases.
For example,
it has been demonstrated that the store location of
such products as bread, milk and dairy products is
instrumental in precipitating unplanned purchases
of surrounding products.18 Point-of-purchase
displays, signs,'9 and shelf extenders20 are illustrative
of other promotional techniques that have, in some
instances, proven effective in stimulating impulse
purchases.
However, increasing product exposure does not
always increase the rate of unplanned purchasing.
For example, one study has shown that some products with relatively high impulse purchasing rates
(Tang, hominy, powdered coffee cream) are not more
responsive to increases in shelf space than the sales
of products having relatively low impulse purchasing
rates (baking soda).21 Moreover, in some instances,
end-aisle displays of relatively high impulse products (pie crust mix and apple pie filling) do not
produce greater direct product profits than the endaisle treatment of relatively low impulse products
(spaghetti and spaghetti sauce) .22
Thus, contrary to what seems to be the opinion
of many marketing academicians and practitioners,
exposure to in-store stimuli triggers only some unplanned purchasing, not all of it. The rate of unplanned purchasing appears to depend on the type
of stimulation technique, the product that is being
18 Lawrence

W. Patterson, In-Store Traffic Flow (New

York: Point-of-Purchase Advertising, Institute, Inc.,
1963), p. 2.
19See, for example, A First Study
of Totality of Impact
of Point-of-Purchase Material on Plus Sales in Supermarkets (New York: Point-of-Purchase Advertising
Institute, Inc., 1959), p. 18; Drugstore Brand Switching and Impulse Buying (New York: Point-of-Purchase Advertising Institute, Inc., 1963), p. 10; Package Store Brand Switching and Impulse Buying (New
York: Point-of-Purchase Advertising Institute, 1963),
p. 10.
20 Samuel Rouda, What Today's Supermarket Chains
Expect from Manufacturers in Promotional Support
(New York: Point-of-Purchase Advertising Institute,
1957), p. 64.
21 Keith Cox, "The Responsiveness of
Food Sales to
Shelf Space Changes in Supermarkets," Journal of
Marketing Research, Vol. 1 (May, 1964), pp. 63-67,
at p. 64.
22 Robert F. Kelly, "An Evaluation of Selected Variables
of End Display Effectiveness" (unpublished Doctoral
Dissertation, Harvard University, 1965), p. 50.

This content downloaded from 111.68.103.163 on Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:03:30 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Journal of Marketing,
1969
Journal
Marketing, January,
January, 1969

82
promoted, and the customer who selectively exposes
himself to, and selectively perceives, the promotional
stimuli. If in-store stimuli do not precipitate all
unplanned purchasing, then it follows that other
factors must be causing some of this type of
behavior.
The Customer-commitment

Hypothesis

The customer-commitment hypothesis maintains

unplanned purchasing, or differences between purchase intentions and actual purchases, are attributable, in part, to incomplete measures

of purchase

plans. "Measured purchase intentions" are not the

same as "actual purchase intentions" because the
shopper is unwilling and/or unable to commit the
time and/or cognitive resources necessary to make
the two types of purchase intentions equivalent.
The customer may be unwilling to itemize her
purchase intentions because she does not want to
invest the amount of time and thought necessary
to give the interviewer a complete roster of her
purchase plans. Instead, she articulates only an
incomplete itemization of what she plans to purchase,
thereby satisfying the requirements of the interview
without spending too much time or having to think
too much.
There are several reasons why the shopper may be
unable to itemize her purchase plans. First, the
shopper may know what she will purchase but may
be unable to articulate these purchase intentions
because of the characteristics of the interview.
The methodology used in most studies of unplanned
purchasing forces the shopper, in the absence of a
shopping list, to rely on memory for purchase intentions. In other words, unaided and nearly spontaneous recall is usually used to measure purchase
plans. Thus, the methodology alone guarantees that
measured purchase plans will deviate to some degree
from actual purchase plans.

Second, the shopper may know what she will purchase but may be unable to relate these intentions
regardless of the amount of assistance given by the
interviewer. That is, without exposure to in-store
stimuli, the shopper may be unable to construct
cognitively and verbalize for the interviewer what
she will purchase.
The logic underlying the customer-commitment
hypothesis was alluded to nearly two decades ago.23
The hypothesis was also deduced from a recent study
of the unplanned purchasing behavior of 600 supermarket shoppers.24 Since the hypothesis was a byproduct rather than an objective of the study, it
was not possible to determine the amount of un23 William Applebaum, "Studying
24

Customer Behavior
in Retail Stores," JOURNAL OF MARKETING, Vol. 16
(October, 1951), pp. 172-178, p. 178.

See, David T. Kollat and RonaldP. Willett, "Customer

Impulse Purchasing Behavior," Journal of Marketing

Research, Vol. 4 (February, 1967), pp. 21-31.

planned purchasing caused by the phenomena comprising the hypothesis.

Implications

To the extent that unplanned purchasing is attributable to the customer-commitment hypothesis,

unplanned purchasing is not unplanned at all, but
rather an artifact of the way in which the behavior is measured. Consequently, true unplanned purchase rates are considerably lower than these that
are currently accepted. That is to say, pre-shopping
decisions about products and brands to be purchased are more common than past studies have
indicated.
The evidence presented indicates that presently
accepted rates of unplanned purchasing25 may exaggerate the potential for influencing buying decisions. As a consequence, promotional expenditures
designed to increase the rate of unplanned purchasing may be excessive. Conclusions concerning the
degree of excessiveness must be postponed until the
quantitative impact of the customer-commitment hypothesis is determined.
Promotional Implications
Retailers sometimes use product unplanned purchasing rates to select products for differential promotional treatments. Such decisions as store location, shelf height, number of shelf facings, and endaisle treatment for specific products are often based,
in part, on product unplanned purchase rates.
Since some unplanned purchasing is not unplanned
at all, but an artifact of the way in which the behavior is measured, true unplanned purchasing
rates are considerably lower than those that are
currently accepted. It seems risky to assume that
all product unplanned purchasing rates are inflated
to the same degree; rather, some product rates are
probably overstated more than are others.
Research to date does not facilitate measuring the
extent of distortion of unplanned rates across products but the direction of bias can be suggested.
Based on the customer commitment explanation the
bias in unplanned rates is likely to be high for items
that are discretionary rather than staple, or have
low frequencies of purchase or have highly variable
interpurchase time periods. These same characteristics are purported to be determinants of unplanned
purchase rates. Hence, product categories with high
measured unplanned purchase rates are also likely to
demonstrate greater measurement error, and conversely, products with low unplanned purchase rates
exhibit smaller amounts of error. As a consequence
there may be a smaller range between products
purported to have high and low unplanned purchase
rates, and the use of these rates as a single criterion
for assignment of promotional effort may be questionable.
25

Same reference as footnote 7, pp. 3-4.

This content downloaded from 111.68.103.163 on Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:03:30 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Is Impulse Purchasing Really a Useful Concept for Marketing Decisions?

Thus, although direct empirical evidence is not
available, from the evidence presented above it appears legitimate to deduce that existing unplanned
purchase rates are likely to be misleading bases for
selecting products for promotional efforts.
Product Category Rates May Be Misleading
Unplanned purchasing rates are typically reported
by product category.26 It is often dangerous to assume that a specific brand's unplanned purchasing
rate is equal to the product category average.
In one instance studied, for example, a food product category had an average unplanned purchase
rate of 51%. Although most of the brands in this
category had unplanned rates approximating 51%,
the unplanned rate for one major brand was only
26 %.27
For reasons already mentioned, the above figures
may not represent the true unplanned rates. However, for purposes of discussion, assume that they
are correct. If so, then the product category rate
may be misleading to both retailers and manufacturers.
If retailers fail to recognize that the unplanned
rates of individual brands may differ significantly
from the product category rate, then, all other things
being equal, they are likely to be indifferent as to
which brand within a product category is given special promotional treatment. In the above case this
may be a mistake, since sales of the brand having
the lower unplanned rate may be less responsive to
some special promotional efforts. Thus, basing promotion decisions on product category averages rather
than the individual brand's unplanned purchase rate
may cause retailers to promote the wrong brand.
Product category rates may also be misleading to
manufacturers. In the above case, for example, the
manufacturer of the brand having an unplanned rate
of 26% may want to know why his brand has such
a relatively low rate. Does it mean that he is doing
a competitively superior job of creating brand awareness and generating pre-shopping brand choice, but
is not getting his share of in-store purchase decisions? Why is he not getting a competitive share
of in-store purchase decisions? The point, of course,
is that the manufacturer cannot ask these kinds of
questions and obtain whatever additional profits the
answers might yield if he fails to remember that
individual brand rates of unplanned purchasing may
differ significantly from product category rates.
Toward an Operational Concept of
Impulse Purchasing
How Unplanned Purchasing Can Become a
Useful Concept for Marketing Decisions

From the discussion above it is apparent that sev26

27

Same reference as footnote 7, pp. 3-4.

David T. Kollat and Ronald P. Willett, "Interbrand
Variation in Unplanned Purchasing Rates" (unpublished working paper, April, 1966).

83

eral problems must be overcome before unplanned

purchasing can become a useful concept for marketing decisions. First, the concept must be precisely
defined. Since the value of the concept hinges in
large part on empirical studies of the extent and
nature of the behavior, it seems desirable to adopt
a definition used in empirical studies, providing
that it is capable of yielding managerially relevant
insights. Second, a series of methodological studies
needs to be conducted in order to devise a measuring
instrument and process that will equate measured
and actual purchase intentions. Space limitations
prohibit a detailed presentation of such studies here.
In general, however, it would appear useful to determine experimentally the effects of interviewer
cueing and customer incentives on the rate of unplanned purchasing. Experimental manipulation of
interviewer cueing would attempt to determine the
extent to which inability to itemize purchase intentions artificially "creates" subsequent unplanned purchasing. Various levels and types of incentives could
be used to overcome customer unwillingness to articulate purchase intentions. Finally, unplanned purchasing rates need to be computed for individual
brands as well as product categories.
Overcoming these problems will involve a substantial commitment of time and resources. However, the
potential value of true rates of unplanned purchasing may exceed the costs of obtaining them. When
true rates are determined, other categories of planning-specifically planned, generally planned, and
brand substitution-would probably differ, both in
magnitude and in relative occurrence, from those
that are currently accepted. These refined measures
of various types of in-store decisions would provide
more sensitive indices of the amount and type of
promotional effort that should be allocated to
products.
Refined measures of unplanned purchasing would
permit a partial functional analysis of the strengths
and weaknesses of a firm's promotional program.
For example, if unplanned purchasing were defined
and measured in such a way as to be equivalent to
in-store purchase decisions, a manufacturer could
use rates of unplanned purchasing for his
brand(s)
as a criterion for evaluating the effectiveness of both
his advertising and in-store promotional
strategy.
Pure measures of unplanned purchasing and other
categories of planning would constitute one of the
most potentially meaningful indices of the real effects
of specific in-store product promotions. For
example,
the difference in a product's unplanned purchase rate
before and after a special in-store promotion could
be used by the retailer as a measure of the effectiveness of that strategy. Other planning categories
could also be used in this manner. These measures
of effectiveness seem particularly useful since
they
indicate both the type and extent of behavioral
change precipitated by an in-store promotional
strategy.

This content downloaded from 111.68.103.163 on Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:03:30 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions