Impulse Buying
As we approach the holiday gifting season, exploring the concept of impulse buying might be helpful. Impulse buying involves unplanned, quick decision-making to immediately acquire a product without regard to thoughtful and deliberate consideration, occurring when exposed to arousing and irresistible stimuli. Online shopping, in particular, is designed to tap into the tendency to purchase goods that we don’t need. For example, 61% of shoppers buy one to three off-list items when shopping.
Often, research on impulse buying is approached in several ways, such as through self-control, self-regulation, and guilt and shame. Yet, there are limits to self-control or self-regulation when faced with strong temptations. Individuals who practice mindfulness have
(a) effective emotion regulation,
(b) enhanced cognitive ability, both in awareness and attention, and
(c) reduced impulse-buying behavior.
Instead of frequent emotional distractions, cognitive ability, and emotion regulation are developed through sustaining attention and awareness skills. These skills help one stay focused on rational goals amid complex environments yet with openness and awareness of multiple alternatives. If individuals are not mindful, they are weak in self-regulation, and marketing stimuli can easily lead them to succumb to the craving to buy, own, and consume products or engage in impulse buying.
Mindful Consumption
Mindful consumption can be effectively cultivated via mindfulness; that is, changes in consumers’ rational decision-making process can be promoted by developing mindfulness. Awareness, a key element of mindfulness, helps lessen automatic buying and unconscious choices. Mindfulness increases the ability to be intentional in awareness and attention at the present moment. Then, it enables him/her to become more ready to accept new ways of perceiving the world. It also elevates decision-making and strengthens cognitive, emotion regulation, and self-regulation.
Mindful Consumption Education for College Students
Consistent mindful training can increase cognitive ability, emotion regulation, and self-regulation. With increased mindfulness, an individual is more likely to decrease impulse buying. The challenge lies in developing an effective mindful consumption program for college students to integrate into a curriculum, with classroom and outside-classroom activities that promote mindfulness. A recent study of college students integrating a mindfulness program into a marketing curriculum showed these benefits:
(a) Enhanced quality of their awareness, which strengthens self-observation skills and critical reflection.
(b) Enabled the students to be aware of trigger cues, such as stimuli that induce consumption behaviors
(c) Developed self-regulation in both daily life and consumption behaviors.
(d) Learning about the mechanism and salience of marketing stimuli through direct experiences in coping with impulse buying
For educators, when designing pedagogy, the researchers in this study recommended that mindfulness be incorporated into courses that focus on behavioral changes, particularly young adult consumers. This is because its mechanism helps enhance the awareness or the efficacy of critical reflection and develop self-regulation, which is vital to constraining familiar habits.
