Exploring the Impact of Scarcity and Brand Awareness on Online Impulsive Buying Behavior: A Moderated Analysis

Abstract

Given the popularity of and easy access to the internet, consumers' attitudes towards life and shopping behavior have changed significantly, and so has online impulsive buying behavior. While there are numerous studies on online impulsive behavior, few have examined the moderating effects of scarcity and brand awareness on online impulsive buying behavior. As such, this study aims to fill these gaps by exploring the effects of value shopping, low price perception, and browsing on impulsive online buying and examining the moderating roles of scarcity and brand awareness. After recruiting six enumerators, we distributed 500 questionnaires and received 423 responses from target business universities. Using Smart PLS, we tested the proposed hypotheses. Of these six hypotheses, the results supported one direct and two moderating hypotheses.  It was found that value shopping significantly affects impulsive online buying, whereas low price perception is negatively associated with online impulsive buying. Also, browsing had an insignificant association with impulsive online buying. Furthermore, scarcity was found to moderate the relationship between browsing and impulsive online buying, and brand awareness also moderated the relationship between low price perception and online impulse buying. However, the result did not support brand awareness moderating the relationship between value shopping and impulsive online buying.