Australasian Marketing Journal 21 (2013) 8593

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Australasian Marketing Journal

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The effect of culture and salespersons retail service quality on impulse buying
Chanthika Pornpitakpan a,, Jie Hui Han b,1
a b

Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Avenida Padre Toms Pereira, Taipa, Macau, China Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, 460 Alexandra Road, #19-00 PSA Building, Singapore 119963, Singapore

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
This study investigates the effect of culture and salespersons retail service quality on impulse buying and provides evidence that service quality moderates the effect of culture on impulse buying. The experiment uses a 2 (culture of participants: Singaporean versus American) by 2 (retail service quality: poor versus good) between-subjects factorial design with 102 Singaporean and 88 American working adults recruited from companies in Singapore. It nds that for both cultures, good service leads to higher impulse buying than does poor service. The signicant interaction between culture and service quality on impulse buying indicates that when service is good, Singaporeans show higher impulse buying than do Americans. In contrast, when service is poor, Singaporeans reveal lower impulse buying than do Americans. The implication is that multinational companies should invest in creating and assuring good service quality when they do business in collectivist cultures but might give relatively higher weight to other kinds of competitive advantages when they do business in individualist cultures. 2013 Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 2 May 2012 Revised 30 January 2013 Accepted 18 February 2013 Available online 22 March 2013 Keywords: Cross-cultural experiments Cultural dimensions Singapore United States of America Service quality Impulse buying Customer relationship management Salespersoncustomer interaction

Marketers have long realized that shoppers are largely making their buying decisions at the store, and shoppers who talk to a salesperson and try on something are twice as likely to buy as those who do neither (Underhill, 1999). Salespersons retail service quality is therefore an important determinant of sales, particularly sales from those purchase decisions made right at the store or impulse buying. It is thus valuable for marketers of multinational companies to know how consumers from different cultures respond to varied levels of salespersons retail service quality, especially with respect to impulse buying, in order to design effective marketing strategies to suit each country. 1. Literature review 1.1. Importance of impulse buying Impulse buying refers to a sudden, compelling, hedonically complex purchasing behavior in which the rapidity of the impulse purchase decision process precludes thoughtful, deliberate

Corresponding author. Address: Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China. Tel: +853 8397 4706, Fax: +853 2883 8320. E-mail addresses: ynvynv@gmail.com, ynvynv@yahoo.com (C. Pornpitakpan), hjiehui@hotmail.com (J.H. Han). 1 Tel.: (65) 6375 1785.

consideration of all information and choice alternatives (Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998; Rook, 1987; Thompson et al., 1990; Weinberg and Gottwald, 1982). It is an unplanned purchase characterized by a relatively rapid decision-making and a subjective bias in favor of immediate possession (Rook and Gardner, 1993). Compared to planned buying behavior, impulse buying is less deliberate and more arousing and irresistible (Hoch and Loewenstein, 1991; OGuinn and Faber, 1989; Rook, 1987). The importance of impulse buying can be seen from the huge sales it generates. Impulse buying behavior has been found in many countries such as the USA (Kacen and Lee, 2002), Canada (Canadian Press, 2012), Germany, the United Kingdom (Dittmar et al., 1995), and Sweden (Hultn and Vanyushyn, 2011). As high as 2762% of all department store purchases are impulse purchases (Bellenger et al., 1978). Impulse buying in the USA accounted for 80% of all purchases in certain product categories (Abrahams, 1997; Smith, 1996). In recent years, the annual sales generated by impulse buying are beyond US$4 billion (Kacen and Lee, 2002). An impulse shopping survey (Consumer Reports, 2009) revealed that 60% of women bought something on a whim in the previous year with their most recent impulse purchase averaging out to US$108. Clothing was the most recent impulsive item, followed by food and accessories (25%, 14%, and 6% of respondents, respectively). A study about impulse buying on e-commerce websites showed that almost 40% of the money spent was from spontaneous purchases (User Interface Engineering, 2001).

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An online survey sponsored by Bank of Montreal interviewed 1000 Canadian adults between August 31 and September 5, 2012. It found that 59% of those surveyed did impulse shopping to cheer themselves up, buying items like clothes, shoes, and technology products. The value of impulse purchases amounted to C$3720 on average per person annually, with men (C$414 on average per month) spending more than women (C$207 on average per month). More than half of respondents regretted impulse shopping and some faced nancial difculties from doing so (Canadian Press, 2012). Clearly, impulse buying has immense impacts on economy and buyers emotional and psychological well-being. 1.2. Factors inuencing impulse buying Technology in the form of e-commerce and television shopping channels has increased and simplied consumers impulse buying opportunities. Moreover, psychographic and demographic trends such as increasing purchasing power of teenagers and young adults, who tend to be more impulsive as found by Wood (1998) that the odds of impulse buying increased modestly with increasing years of age between 18 and 39 and thereafter declined, may increase impulse purchases. Previous research conducted mainly in the USA and Great Britain (individualist cultures) has shown that several factors inuence impulse buying behavior. These include consumers mood or emotional state (Canadian Press, 2012; Donovan et al., 1994; Jalees, 2009; Rook, 1987; Rook and Gardner, 1993; Weinberg and Gottwald, 1982), trait buying impulsiveness (Rook and Fisher, 1995; Weun et al., 1998), normative evaluation of the appropriateness of engaging in impulse buying (Rook and Fisher, 1995), self-identity (Dittmar et al., 1995), and demographic factors such as age (Bellenger et al., 1978; Wood, 1998), biological sex (Canadian Press, 2012; Dittmar et al., 1995), and income (Hultn and Vanyushyn, 2011). Another factor inuencing impulse buying behavior is culture, which refers to the dynamic process that occurs within a given society and which creates the cognitive map of beliefs, values, meaning, and attitudes that drive peoples perception, thoughts, reasoning, actions, responses, and interactions (Tung, 1995). Li et al. (2004) found the same number of unplanned purchases for American and Chinese shoppers. This unexpected nding might be because the Chinese sample was younger (79.3% was less than 35 years old) than the American sample (65.8% was less than 35 years old, p < 0.0001). As younger people tend to be more impulsive as found in Wood (1998), this Chinese sample may have exhibited more unplanned purchases than what was hypothesized for Chinese people in general. However, Jaleess (2009) study on 180 Pakistani respondents found that collectivism had a stronger relationship with impulse buying behavior as compared to individualism. This result might be treated as anomalous and perhaps unique to Pakistani culture. More replications comparing collectivists and individualists from different regions of the world are needed. On the contrary, impulse buying was found to be less prevalent in China than in North America (Doran, 2002). Similarly, Kacen and Lees (2002) survey of consumers in Australia, the USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia found that both cultural difference (individualismcollectivism) and individual difference (independent interdependent self-concept) factors affected impulse buying behavior. Although no signicant difference in trait buying impulsiveness existed between Caucasians and Asians, a difference was found in their impulse buying behavior. Compared to Caucasians, Asians engaged in less impulse buying behavior. Furthermore, independence did not inuence Asians impulse buying behavior, but it did contribute to impulse buying behavior among Caucasians. For Caucasians, the more independent their self-concept was, the more impulse buying behavior they were likely to exhibit.

Lastly, trait buying impulsiveness decreased with age among Asians but not Caucasians. 1.3. Objective and contribution of the study As the marketplace worldwide becomes increasingly connected and globalized, the impact of cultural differences on consumer behavior should not be ignored (Maheswaran and Shavitt, 2000). Given the above mixed results regarding the inuence of culture on impulse buying behavior, which by itself has a great contribution to companies sales, countries economy, and consumers psychological well-being, further empirical evidence is needed to help global marketers understand the relationship between cultural difference and impulse buying. Such mixed results suggest that many factors interact with cultural difference, so it is benecial to identify at least one of those moderating factors. According to Varadarajan (1996, p. 3), a contribution of a study can be to provide evidence of moderator variables that hold implications for actionable marketing practice. This research utilizes an experiment to identify one such moderator. Salespersons retail service quality has not been studied whether it affects impulse buying. In a retail setting, salespeople are often the primary source of communication to customers. More important, they make up a part of the nal touch point that consumers encounter before making purchases and therefore their behavior can draw consumers toward or away from a purchase. The broader term retail service quality is dened as consumers evaluations of the overall excellence or superiority of the service from a retail store (Parasuraman et al., 1988) and is conceptualized as comprising ve dimensions: physical aspects, reliability, personal interaction, problem solving, and policy (Dabholkar et al., 1996). Specically, salespersons retail service quality in this research focuses on the personal interaction dimension, encompassing the salespersons perceived friendliness, pleasantness, courtesy, attentiveness to customers, and willingness to help customers. While Asian developing countries seek economic success, their citizens become more individualist and materialistic (Kurman and Sriram, 2002). Hence, it is interesting to study whether these new Asians differ from their Western counterparts in terms of impulse buying behavior given different levels of salespersons retail service quality. American and Singaporean cultures are examined in this study because they are relatively similar in terms of economic development but are different in many cultural dimensions. These include individualismcollectivism (American index = 91, Singaporean index = 20, higher scores mean more individualism), power distance (American index = 40, Singaporean index = 74, higher scores mean larger power distance), uncertainty avoidance (American index = 46, Singaporean index = 8, higher scores mean more uncertainty avoidance), masculinity (American index = 62, Singaporean index = 48, higher scores mean more masculinity), and long-term orientation (American index = 29, Singaporean index = 48, higher scores mean higher long-term orientation) (Hofstede et al., 2010). Major theoretical contributions of this study are two. First, its nding that for both Singaporeans and Americans, good retail service leads to higher impulse buying than does poor retail service reafrms the importance of providing good service. Second, the study demonstrates that salespersons retail service quality moderates the effect of culture on impulse buying behavior. Particularly, the nding shows that collectivists like Singaporeans exhibit lower impulse buying than individualists like Americans only when the retail service is poor. When the service is good, Singaporeans actually demonstrate higher impulse buying than Americans do. The following sections provide hypotheses about the effects of culture and salespersons retail service quality on impulse buying

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and delineate the methodology used to test the hypotheses. Next, the sections present the studys ndings, contributions, limitations, and future research suggestions. 1.4. Hypothesis for the effect of salespersons retail service quality on impulse buying Lovelock (1981) asserts that service employees must perform several roles in a service encounter. Among many others, service personnel play the role of marketers. They physically embody the product and are walking billboards from a promotional standpoint (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996, p. 304) and as such become the service (Booms and Bitner, 1981; Czepiel, 1990; Grove et al., 1992) or the company itself in consumers eyes. Further, it has consistently been reported that the behavior of contact employees plays a critical role in inuencing consumers perceptions of the salespersoncustomer interaction (Bitner et al., 1990; Spiro and Weitz, 1990). The quality of interactions between service personnel and consumers has become so important that consumers base a large part of their assessment of overall quality and/or satisfaction on these interactions (Bitner et al., 1990, 1994). Numerous studies have also shown that service personnels interactions with customers have a signicant impact on perceived service quality (Bitner et al., 1994; Bowen and Schneider, 1985; Gronroos, 1982; Hartline and Ferrell, 1996). In fact, all the service quality conceptualizations in services marketing literature explicitly include interaction quality as one of the measurement components (Brady and Cronin, 2001; Mittal and Lassar, 1996; Parasuraman et al., 1988; Rust and Oliver, 1994), thus indicating the importance of service personnel and interaction quality in shaping service quality perceptions. Service quality is principal for services marketing because the core product marketed is performance (Berry and Parasuraman, 1991), and it is deemed vital when service is an augmented product. Past research has shown that higher levels of service quality evaluations (Bitner, 1990; Boulding et al., 1993; Taylor and Baker, 1994; Zeithaml et al., 1996) and expected/predicted service quality (Shao et al., 2004) brought about higher purchase intentions. Hence, it can be deduced that good salespersons retail service quality, as compared to poor, is more likely to inspire people to buy things without preplanning. Thus, Hypothesis 1 states that: Hypothesis 1. Consumers who encounter good retail service from a salesperson will exhibit higher impulse buying behavior than will those who encounter poor retail service.

1.5. Hypothesis for the effect of culture on impulse buying As several developing countries in Asia strive to achieve a developed country status, their citizens (e.g., Singaporeans, Hong Kong citizens) tend to become more individualist and materialistic (Kurman and Sriram, 2002). Yet, their cultural upbringing motivates them to control and suppress their impulsive inclination for immediate gratication (Kacen and Lee, 2002). The impact of culture on consumer responses has long been of great interest in international-marketing research (e.g., Christodoulides et al., 2012; Lam et al., 2012; Pornpitakpan, 1999). In discussing the differences between cultures, one of the most discussed aspects is individualismcollectivism. Collectivism is dened as a situation in which people belong to in-groups or collectivities which are supposed to look after them in exchange for loyalty (Hofstede and Bond, 1984, p. 419). Collectivists see themselves as an integral part of one or more in-groups, such as family and organizations, and are motivated by the norms and duties imposed by the in-groups. They give priorities to the goals of ingroups (Triandis, 1995) and emphasize control and moderation of

their own emotions more than individualists do (Russell and Yik, 1996; Tsai and Levenson, 1997). For example, Asians (collectivists) have been found to control negative emotions and display only positive ones to acquaintances (Gudykunst, 1993). In contrast, individualism is dened as a situation in which people are supposed to look after themselves and their immediate family only (Hofstede and Bond, 1984, p. 419). Individualists see themselves as being autonomous and independent, give priorities to their own personal goals, and are motivated by their own preferences, needs, and rights. As a result, when individualists see a desirable object, their main consideration may be to satisfy their own desires. Americans have been classied as individualists whereas Chinese as collectivists (Hofstede et al., 2010; Triandis, 1995; Triandis and Gelfand, 1998; Chiou, 2001). Kacen and Lee (2002) reasoned that impulsiveness is related to sensation seeking and emotional arousal (Rook, 1987; Weinberg and Gottwald, 1982) and that children in collectivist cultures are socialized to control their impulses since young (Ho, 1994). Their study found that although average collectivist consumers were as trait impulsive as average individualist consumers, the former were better able to control their impulse buying behavior and to put their own feelings aside in order to act appropriately due to their cultural upbringing, which emphasizes interdependence, emotional control, and moderation. Generally, given the above rationales and evidence, it might be expected that individualists (such as Americans) tend to exhibit more impulse buying than do collectivists (such as Singaporeans). However, the discussion below points to a possibility that the effect of individualismcollectivism orientation on impulse buying depends on the service quality of the salesperson. Two interesting aspects of culture that may moderate the impulse buying behavior of collectivists like Singaporeans are the concept of face and favor creation and reciprocation. Face is an important concept in collectivist cultures (Ho, 1976; Hu, 1944) and is dened in detail by Ho (1976, p. 883) as follows: Face is the respectability and/or deference which a person can claim for himself from others, by virtue of the relative position he occupies in his social network and the degree to which he is judged to have functioned adequately in that position as well as acceptably in his general conduct; the face extended to a person by others is a function of the degree of congruence between judgments of his total condition in life, including his actions as well as those of people closely associated with him, and the social expectations that others have placed upon him. In terms of two interacting parties, face is the reciprocated compliance, respect, and/or deference that each party expects from, and extends to, the other party. In short, face refers to the respect and honor of others as shown in the following examples: (i) he thinks he would lose face if he admitted the mistake; and (ii) she tried to save face by inventing a story about being overseas at the time (Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary). Another example is Lying is an acceptable behavior in collectivist cultures, if it saves face or helps the in-group (Triandis, 2001, p. 917). A moral individual behaves as his or her role is determined by in-group members and society. If he or she deviates from such expected behavior, not only the person but also the whole in-group loses face (Triandis, 2001). Gaining respect is important to collectivists as found in several between-culture studies that people in collectivistic cultures score higher than those in individualist cultures on afliative tendencies, interdependence, sensitivity to rejection, and needs for deference/respect (Chiu, 1990; Hui and Villareal, 1989; Singelis et al., 1995; Yamaguchi et al., 1995). Favor refers to a kind action that a person does for someone or an advantage that a person gives to someone (Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary). Thus, favor creation means conducting a kind action or giving advantages to someone, and favor reciprocation means conducting a kind action or giving advantages back to the person who has done someone a favor. Favor reciprocation needs

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not be in the same form and magnitude as the favor received. For example, Ms. A received $2000 from Mr. B when she was in nancial difculty. Later, Ms. A reciprocated Mr. Bs favor by being a volunteer in Mr. Bs election campaign. Favor creation and reciprocation is important in Japanese and Thai societies (Pornpitakpan, 2000) and can be extended to other collectivist cultures like Singaporean. Likewise, Filipinos, who are collectivist (Hofstede et al., 2010), have been reported to emphasize reciprocal obligations (Bonifacio, 1977; Bulatao, 1963; Enriquez, 1992; Guthrie and Azores, 1968; Guthrie and Jacobs, 1966; Lynch, 1973). Collectivists are taught since young to return the favors that other people have done for them, and when opportunities arise, they should do others a favor. The concept of favor creation and reciprocation in a way results from emphasis on interdependence among people. The belief I help you so that in the future you or others will also help me is strongly held and widely practiced in collectivist societies. It may be predicted that compared to Americans, when Singaporeans receive good retail service from a salesperson, they will feel more obliged to reciprocate the favor of the salesperson and to uphold their face (that is, to show that they have enough money to buy things in the store) by making more unplanned purchases. In other words, the feelings of favor (i.e., the good service provided by the salesperson) reciprocation and face preservation, both of which have been shown to be strongly held in collectivist cultures, work together to overrule the tendency to control impulses for collectivists when service quality is good. Hence, the following hypothesis is made: Hypothesis 2a. When the retail service from a salesperson is good, Singaporeans will exhibit higher impulse buying behavior than Americans. In contrast, when receiving poor retail service from a salesperson, although Singaporeans may feel pressurized to buy in order to save their face (because if they do not buy, they may be perceived as not having money), the poor retail service provides a good justication for them not to engage in the act of buying for the sake of preserving their face. Instead, Singaporeans may feel that the salesperson does not treat them well, does not care about their face, does not respect them, or is insulting them, so they react by making fewer unplanned purchases than Americans. Thus, coupled with the nding that collectivists are better able to control their impulse buying than individualists are (Kacen and Lee, 2002), Hypothesis 2b predicts that: Hypothesis 2b. When the retail service from a salesperson is poor, Singaporeans will engage in lower impulse buying behavior than Americans.

product because interviews with 10 Singaporean and 10 American adults of the same characteristics as the actual sample indicated that this product category was commonly bought on impulse, a nding consistent with the survey result published in Consumer Reports (2009). Following many experiments in psychological (e.g., Greenberg, 1967; Weiner, 1980) and marketing (e.g., Folkes, 1984; Pornpitakpan, 1999; Suprenant and Soloman, 1987) studies, this research employed role-playing scenarios. While role-playing scenarios may limit richness of interactions, they provide some degree of control and allow clean manipulation of experimental factors (Campbell and Kirmani, 2000). As role-playing scenarios may be cognitively more demanding than real interactions with a salesperson, Campbell and Kirmani argue that role-playing scenarios create a more conservative test of hypotheses. This method was further supported by Bitners (1990) nding that participants found sales scenarios understandable and believable. Participants were asked to imagine themselves in a scenario portraying their window-shopping at a retail store without prior intention to purchase anything. The scenario described an interaction between the participant and a salesperson named Kate. Salespersons retail service quality was manipulated through the depiction of the salespersons behavior and the quality of service provided. For instance, in the poor retail service scenario, the salesperson greeted the participant with a cold face, was inattentive, and clearly showed her displeasure toward the participant. In the good retail service scenario, she greeted the participant with a warm smile and friendly gesture, was attentive, anticipated the participants needs, and carried herself well throughout the whole interaction. Appendix A shows the scenarios used. After reading the scenario, participants answered a questionnaire containing the manipulation checks (attitude toward the salesperson and perceived service quality of the store) of the independent variable, the dependent variable of impulse buying, potential covariates, and demographic variables. Then, they were debriefed and thanked for their participation in the study. The scenarios and questionnaires had been pretested at various stages to ensure that the manipulation of the independent variable was successful and the questions were clear and understandable. 2.3. Measures All the measures described below were 7-point scales. 2.3.1. Attitude toward the salesperson As a manipulation check of salespersons retail service quality, this semantic differential measure consisted of six items taken from Brown (1995, Cronbachs alpha = 0.95). The scale asked participants how they felt about the salesperson with the following anchor points: very bad/very good, very ineffective/very effective, very unpleasant/very pleasant, very useless/very useful, very unhelpful/very helpful, and very unlikable/very likable. To capture the friendliness aspect of the salespersons behavior, another item was added to ask whether participants perceived the salesperson to be very unfriendly/very friendly. The Cronbachs alpha coefcients for this scale were 0.99 for both Singaporeans and Americans. If alpha is too high, it may suggest a high level of item redundancy; that is, a number of items ask the same question slightly differently (Streiner and Norman, 2003). Nevertheless, high alpha does not pose a threat to the internal consistency of the scale; it just indicates some items in the scale may be dropped to achieve a shorter scale. 2.3.2. Perceived service quality Baker et al.s (1994) service quality scale (Cronbachs alpha = 0.84 in their study) was used as the other manipulation

2. Methods 2.1. Research design This study used a 2 (cultures: Singaporean versus American) by 2 (salespersons retail service quality: poor versus good) betweensubjects factorial design experiment. Participants in each culture were randomly assigned to each of the two retail service quality conditions. 2.2. Experimental stimuli and manipulation of the independent variable Window-shopping was chosen as a scenario where impulse buying could happen. Clothes were chosen as the experimental

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check of salespersons retail service quality. Comprising ve Likert items (measuring the extent of disagreement/agreement to the given statements), this scale purported to measure the quality of service provided by a retail store, especially the interaction between employees and customers. The Cronbachs alpha coefcients for this scale were 0.92 for Singaporeans and 0.98 for Americans. 2.3.3. Impulse buying Impulse buying was operationalized as intention to purchase an item that an individual has no prior plan to purchase. A single-item purchase intention measure widely used in marketing studies (e.g., Armstrong and Overton, 1971; Pornpitakpan and Green, 2007, 2010) was employed, which could be justied by Bergkvist and Rossiters (2007) demonstration that a single-item measure should be used when measuring a construct that contains neither a multicomponent or multiconstituent object nor a multicomponent attribute but rather a concrete singular object (such as an ad or a brand) and a concrete attribute (such as attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand). If marketing researchers had been more concerned with the theory of marketing constructs, there would probably have been less mindless use of multiple-item measures in marketing (Bergkvist and Rossiter, 2007, p. 183). To measure impulse buying behavior, participants were asked to indicate the likelihood that they would buy at least one piece of clothing from the store (from 1 = very unlikely to 7 = very likely) after browsing the store and interacting with the salesperson. This measure assessed impulse buying because participants, according to the role-play in the scenario, did not have any plan to buy any clothes at all when walking into the store. The construct consists of a concrete singular object (the cloth) and a concrete attribute (the likelihood to buy), thus suitable for being measured by a single item. In addition, the following potential covariates were measured: sex distribution; average price of T-shirts and shirts already bought; amount of clothes already owned; clothing interest [measured by Hawes and Lumpkins (1984) clothing interest scale]; age range distribution; social class distribution; marital status distribution; education distribution; income distribution; clothes purchase frequency; maximum number of clothes bought at one go; average price of the pants already bought; trait buying impulsiveness [measured by the buying impulsiveness scale in Rook and Fisher (1995)]; self-control; vanity concern for physical appearance [measured by the concern for physical appearance subscale in Netemeyer et al.s (1995) vanity scale]; and normative evaluation of impulse buying, which was measured as an average of disagreement/agreement to three items: I feel that it is wrong to buy things impulsively, My parents will scold me if I buy expensive things spontaneously, and Impulse buying is discouraged in our society. 2.4. Sample The convenience sample in this study consisted of 102 Singaporean and 88 American working adults recruited from companies in Singapore. These Americans had resided in Singapore for less than three years and thus should have received little inuence from Singaporean culture. For the Singaporean sample, 59 persons (57.8%) were female. The majority of participants were 21 30 years old (80 persons or 78.4%), held a bachelor degree (64 persons or 62.7%), were single (74 persons or 72.5%), had monthly income of S$10013000 (54 persons or 52.9%), and viewed themselves as being in the middle class (91 persons or 89.2%). For the American sample, 51 persons (58.0%) were female. The majority of participants were 2130 years old (61 persons or 69.3%), held a bachelor degree (51 persons or 58.0%), were single

(57 persons or 64.8%), had monthly income of US$10013000 (28 persons or 31.8%), and viewed themselves as being in the middle class (76 persons or 86.4%). Participants across the four groups (culture salespersons retail service quality) did not differ in the following potential covariates: sex distribution, average price of T-shirts and shirts already bought, amount of clothes already owned, and clothing interest. However, participants across groups did differ in the following variables: (i) age range distribution [v2 (15) = 40.70, p < 0.001]; (ii) social class distribution [v2 (9) = 22.55, p < 0.01]; (iii) marital status distribution [v2 (6) = 12.93, p < 0.05]; (iv) education distribution [v2 (9) = 35.55, p < 0.001]; (v) income distribution [v2 (15) = 45.73, p < 0.001]; (vi) clothes purchase frequency [F (3, 186) = 3.06, p < 0.05]; (vii) maximum number of clothes bought at one go [F (3, 184) = 5.30, p < 0.01]; (viii) average price of the pants already bought [F (3, 183) = 3.40, p < 0.05]; (ix) trait buying impulsiveness [F (3, 186) = 5.20, p < 0.01]; (x) self-control [F (3, 186) = 7.93, p < 0.001]; (xi) vanity concern for physical appearance [F (3, 186) = 4.75, p < 0.01]; and (xii) normative evaluation of impulse buying [F (3, 186) = 20.18, p < 0.0001]. Nevertheless, because these variables had no inuence on or had very low correlation with the dependent variable, no covariates were required in subsequent data analyses.

2.5. Pretest To examine how important face is and what situations cause Singaporeans to lose face, focus group interviews with 32 Singaporeans were conducted. Participants were working adults recruited from companies in Singapore (50% were males, 69% were single, 75% aged 2130, 59% held a bachelor degree, 50% had monthly income of S$10013000, and all viewed themselves as being in the middle class). Based on these interviews, Singaporeans feel that they lose face when they fail to do things that they are expected to do based on their role and social status, which in turn depend on other factors such as wealth, education, occupation, rank, seniority, age, and so forth. They also lose face when they are criticized, looked down upon, humiliated, rejected, or ignored, especially if these incidents are known to the public. Generally, Singaporeans try their best to preserve their face because losing face brings shame to them and in certain circumstances to their family as well. In addition, they are taught to avoid breaking others face because that will create enemies. People can preserve their face by, for example, driving the models of cars that they are expected to be able to afford and donating an amount they are expected to donate (the higher their social status is, the higher the amount expected of them).

3. Results 3.1. Manipulation checks ANOVA by salespersons retail service quality revealed a successful manipulation of this independent variable. The main effect of salespersons retail service quality was signicant on attitude toward the salesperson [F (1, 188) = 822.25, p < 0.0001, partial g2 = 0.83] and perceived service quality [F (1, 188) = 85.36, p < 0.0001, partial g2 = 0.31]. Participants in the poor retail service condition exhibited less favorable attitude toward the salesperson (M = 2.07, SD = 0.93) and lower perceived service quality (M = 3.68, SD = 1.81) than did those in the good retail service condition (M = 6.24, SD = 0.95 for attitude toward the salesperson; M = 5.56, SD = 0.89 for perceived service quality).

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3.2. Tests of hypotheses Two-way ANOVA (culture salespersons retail service quality) revealed a signicant interaction between culture and salespersons retail service quality [F (1, 186) = 8.46, p < 0.01, partial g2 = 0.04] and a signicant main effect of salespersons retail service quality [F (1, 186) = 49.50, p < 0.0001, partial g2 = 0.21] on impulse buying. Fig. 1 shows the pattern of interaction between culture and salespersons retail service quality on impulse buying. Fig. 1 and the follow-up pairwise comparisons unveiled that for both Singaporean and American participants, good retail service from the salesperson (M = 6.54, SD = 0.65 for Singaporeans; M = 5.86, SD = 1.48 for Americans) led to higher impulse buying than poor retail service (M = 4.16, SD = 2.07, p < 0.001 for Singaporeans; M = 4.87, SD = 2.13, p < 0.01 for Americans), consistent with Hypothesis 1. In support of Hypothesis 2a, when retail service from the salesperson was good, Singaporeans (M = 6.54, SD = 0.65) engaged in higher impulse buying than Americans (M = 5.86, SD = 1.48, p < 0.05). In contrast but in line with Hypothesis 2b, when retail service from the salesperson was poor, Singaporeans (M = 4.16, SD = 2.07) exhibited lower impulse buying than Americans (M = 4.87, SD = 2.13, p < 0.05). 4. Discussion This section summarizes the research design and ndings, discusses the theoretical contributions and managerial implications, points out the limitations of the study, and suggests areas for future research. 4.1. Summary of the research design and ndings This research employs a 2 (culture of participants: Singaporean versus American) by 2 (salespersons retail service quality: poor versus good) between-subjects factorial design experiment with 102 Singaporean and 88 American working adults. The results support all hypotheses. First, for both Singaporean and American participants, good retail service leads to higher impulse buying than poor retail service. Second, the signicant interaction between culture and salespersons retail service quality on impulse buying indicates that when

service is good, Singaporeans show higher impulse buying than Americans do. This may be because Singaporeans feel more obliged to uphold their face and to reciprocate the favor of the salesperson by intending to make more purchases. However, when service is poor, Singaporeans engage in lower impulse buying than Americans do. This may be due to two reasons: (i) Singaporeans (collectivists) are more capable of controlling their impulse buying than Americans (individualists) are, and (ii) Singaporeans feel that the salesperson does not treat them well, does not care about their face, does not respect them, or is insulting them, so they react by intending to make fewer purchases than Americans. 4.2. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications The nding that for both Singaporeans and Americans, good retail service leads to higher impulse buying than poor retail service reafrms the importance of providing good service, which can motivate customers to buy products even though they do not have any prior intention to buy. Although some companies may think that providing poor service does not hurt them if they offer good products, detrimental effects of poor service will show in the long term. Gamut of alternatives exists for consumers who are annoyed by bad customer service. First, some customers refuse to purchase products from a store that provides appalling service and will step out of the store immediately or move onto the next store. This will eventually erode the overall sales and protability of the company. Second, some customers who encounter poor service may not revisit the store, leading to permanent sales loss for the company. Third and most important, they may tell others about the bad service they receive, discouraging other potential customers to patronize the company. Given todays widespread use of social networking and the internet, spreading negative word-of-mouth is just a matter of a few clicks from anywhere in the world. Past studies (Doran, 2002; Kacen and Lee, 2002) nd that collectivists are better at controlling their impulse buying behavior than individualists, but no study has identied salespersons retail service quality as a moderator of the effect of culture on impulse buying. A major theoretical contribution of this study is discovering that the effect of culture on impulse buying is moderated by salespersons retail service quality. Specically, collectivists like Singaporeans exhibit lower impulse buying than individualists like Americans only when retail service from the salesperson is poor. When it is good, Singaporeans actually engage in higher impulse buying than Americans do. The above ndings suggest that collectivists are more sensitive than individualists are to service quality, so an implication for multinational companies is that it is more crucial to provide good service in collectivist than in individualist cultures. Companies should therefore invest in creating and assuring good service quality when doing business in collectivist cultures. However, they may give relatively higher priorities to building other kinds of competitive advantages when conducting business in individualist cultures, for example, investing in brand-building activities, integrated marketing communication campaigns, and research and development in order to create higher quality products at lower costs. In particular, investment in integrated marketing communication activities in individualist cultures is consistent with the suggestion in Pornpitakpan and Green (2007, p. 221): The study has raised the possibility that external-control/collectivist cultures may be more inuenced by advertising, regardless of the appeal employed. A further possibility raised by this study is that different types of cultures may require different amounts of advertising to achieve equal levels of effectiveness. Such a nding indicates that advertisers could spend proportionately less in collectivist cultures than they do in individualist cultures. Certainly, the above advice

Impulse Buying 7

3 Singaporean American 1 Poor service Good service Service Quality

Fig. 1. Mean impulse buying by culture and retail service quality of the salesperson.

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does not imply that companies can neglect service quality in individualist cultures. Instead, it stresses that the weight given to service quality in individualist cultures can be relatively less than that in collectivist cultures. As presented in the introduction, impulse buying is a widely recognized phenomenon in many developed countries and accounts for a large portion of purchases. It is prevalent even in high-priced products such as cars (Doran, 2002). Consumers are evidently vulnerable to impulse buying. Collectivist upbringing may help restraining impulse buying behavior but even so can fail to guard against it when collectivists receive good retail service quality, as demonstrated in this study. Marketers have been trying to elicit more impulse buying from consumers via various strategies such as offering good promotion incentives, limiting consumers decision-making time, using hardsale approaches, employing exciting announcements and stimulating music, and so forth. This study suggests that another effective strategy for both collectivist and individualist cultures is to provide good retail service from the salesperson. While these strategies are effective in inducing impulse buying, some are more annoying (like using hard-sale approaches) than others, and some bring about winwin situations (like offering good promotion incentives and providing good retail service quality). Marketers should thus implement only the strategies that benet both parties, bearing in mind that excessive attempts to promote consumers impulse buying may be perceived as unethical and consequently may be intervened by public policy makers, media, and consumer protection groups. 4.3. Limitations of the study Limitations of this research are two. First, the context of service is salespersons retail service quality, so generalization to other service contexts should be made with some caution. Second, the use of scenarios may not be so realistic as interactions with a real salesperson in a real store. However, as discussed in Section 2, the use of scenarios has many advantages and provides a more conservative test of hypotheses. It also ensures more internal validity than using interactions with a real salesperson in a real store, which is subject to a myriad of noises or extraneous variables that can jeopardize the internal validity of the research, for instance, physical attractiveness of the salesperson, inconsistent behavior of the salesperson, and uncontrollable atmospheres and environments like the number of customers in the store and the noise outside the store. 4.4. Suggestions for future research Although participants in the good retail service from the salesperson condition acknowledge that the service is excellent, some of them regard service quality from the salesperson as an ancillary part of the entire shopping experience. Hence, future research may examine whether different levels of salespersons retail service quality lead to different amounts of purchases and time spent in the store, and whether other factors such as product attractiveness and value for money can compensate for poor retail service. One of the limitations of this research, as discussed above, is the context of salespersons retail service quality. Future research may examine whether the results in this study are applicable in other contexts, for example, service by professionals like accountants, lawyers, and physicians and business-to-business service. Furthermore, additional cultures should be investigated to see the generalizability of the ndings in this study. Finally, future research should identify other variables that may interact with culture and/or salespersons retail service quality with respect to impulse buying. Given the importance of impulse buying in marketing, any variable that can increase or decrease it

should be clearly understood so that companies can increase sales effectively while public policy makers can prevent marketers from manipulating consumers to indulge in excessive impulse buying. Appendix A A.1. Scenarios used in the experiment A.1.1. Scenario for poor retail service You are in a shopping mall to while away your leisure time. You walk into a large apparel store with a wide array of choices for men and women. You want to just browse for fun and have no intention to buy clothes. A sales clerk says hello to you with a cold face and lets you walk around. While looking around, the items on display start catching your eyes. You pick up a T-shirt, which is one size too small. Then, you move onto the next rack, where you pick up some more shirts. At the next rack, you pick up a few pairs of pants in the latest fashion. Eventually, you have accumulated a pile of clothes in your hands. You look around, but instead of attending to you, the salesclerk, Kate, is chatting with another sales clerk. You continue browsing with those clothes in hands. No sales clerk approaches you during this period. When you are nally ready, you approach Kate, saying that you would like to try on the clothes. She slowly removes the hangers on the clothes and returns the whole pile of clothes to you. You ask, Can you get me a larger size for this T-shirt and a blue color for this one? Do you also have these pants with slightly smaller waist? After running several trips to the storage room to get the right sizes and colors for you, Kate points at the dressing room and asks you to walk there yourself. Throughout this whole process, Kate clearly shows weariness, unwillingness, boredom, and impatience. You think this is among the worst services you have encountered in this country and feel like an unimportant customer. Now, you are looking at yourself in the mirror. You end up with ve pieces of clothing that you think make you look good, and you feel like buying them. The prices of the clothes are the same as the average prices of the clothes you have bought before, and you nd the prices to be reasonable for the quality. Today you happen to carry enough cash. A.1.2. Scenario for good retail service You are in a shopping mall to while away your leisure time. You walk into a large apparel store with a wide array of choices for men and women. You want to just browse for fun and have no intention to buy clothes. A sales clerk walks up to you with a smile and says, Hi, my name is Kate. May I help you nd something? You shake your head and reply, Maybe later. Im just looking. Thank you. Then, you begin looking around. While looking around, the items on display start catching your eyes. You pick up a T-shirt, which is one size too small. Then, you move onto the next rack, where you pick up some more shirts. At the next rack, you pick up a few pairs of pants in the latest fashion. Eventually, you have accumulated a pile of clothes in your hands. Seeing that you are struggling with the pile of clothes, Kate approaches you and offers her assistance. She deftly removes the hangers on the clothes and says, Shall I place these in a dressing room for you while you continue your browsing? You reply, Yes, please. In the meantime, can you get me a larger size for this T-shirt and a blue color for this one? Do you also have these pants with a slightly smaller waist? After running several trips to the storage room to get the right sizes and colors for you, Kate ushers you toward a dressing room. Throughout this whole process, Kate maintains a pleasant smile on her face and is attentive to your needs. You think this is among

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