The Influence Of Temporal Distance On Consumers'Online Impulse Buying Behavior

A considerable proportion of sales of a lot of products categories are from impulse buying in traditional in-store retailing environments. The importance of impulse buying has always been concentrated by retailers and scholars. However, in internet retail environment, the study of online impulse buying has just begun. In current related studies researchers focused on three aspects:first, the definition and measurement of online impulse buying behavior.Second, the environmental factors impacting online impulse buying behavior.Third, the mechanism of online impulse buying behavior. Overall, such studies were standing at the point of discovering the specific difference on online impulse comparing with the findings of traditional impulse researches. Whether from the definition, measurement, influence factors or behavioral mechanisms, the role of website attributes as stimuli can not be ignored.The related studies almost were based on "stimulus-organism-response"paradigm in environmental psychology to carry out.This article studied the effect and mechanism of the different staged delivery time on online buying behavior from the perspectives of staged construction cognition about temporal duration in temporal psychology. Delivery time is a different stimuli from traditional retail environment and website attributes, so it's important to explor its influence on online impulse buying.This article synthesized the cognitive-emotion response theories on temporalognition in temporal psychology and online buying in information system researches.Lab experiments and online field experiments were done to explore the effect and mechanism of three temporal stages of delivery time on online impulse buying behavior. Finally, the different moderating effects of different variables on three stages of delivery time were theoretically explained based on this mechanism.The main conclusions are:first, consumer perceived enjoyment directly affects online impulse buying but perceived usefulness indirectly influence inline impulse buying through the perceived enjoyment.Second, consumers' perception of three stages of delivery time which are no delivery time,short delivery time and long delivery time influence online impulse buying behavior through the emotional and cognitive psychological response. Combination of online consumer behavior response, online emotional variable is the consumers' perception enjoyment and online cognitive variable is the perceived usefulness.Third, there is the highest impulse buying percentage on virtual products which doesn't need delivery time and influences online impulse buying by both emotional and cognitive path.Forth, actual products only through cognitive path indirectly affect online impulse buying. Consumers have more buying impulse on products with short than long delivery time because they perceive more usefulness.Fifth, This mechanism can explain why the hedonic of goods moderates the effect of virtual products rather than actual products on impulse buying,because the hedonic of goods can increase the perceived enjoyment rather than usefulness. It also explains the moderating effect of consumers'anticipating pleasure on actual product with long delivery time.Because some promotions tactics such as random little gifts with delivery will increase consumers' anticipation about the time and situation of taking delivery and increase their emotional enjoyment. But this tactic is invaild on the products with short delivery time.The innovations of our studies are:first, systematicly and comprehensively explored temporal duration related factor which influences online buying behavior.Based on reality of online retailing we proposed two temporal duration variables that were product categories (virtual vs.actual) and delivery time. Second, studied effect of such factors on online impulse buying behavior by both lab experiments and online field experiments, also studied some important moderating effect, such as the hedonic of goods, consumers's anticipatory pleasure and provided practical suggestion to online retailers. Third, we verified the mechanisms of above influences which were in accordance with the range-synthetic model of temportal duration cognition. Because the duration of delivery time stages were all within 2 weeks, our studies enriched the findings about this temporal stages cognition.Finally, future research directions were proposed:first, the topics of definition and measurement about online impulse buying should be kept on concerntrating.Second, more plentiful influence factors and behavioral response variables should be mined.