Research Proposal

Management Learning and Research

MN7183

Impulsive buying behaviour

Among FMCG consumers of highly residential areas
In Sri Lanka with special emphasise to
Keells super customers of Thimbirigasyaya

Vickson Brito Daniel

Student ID 18031232
1. Introduction

An impulse purchase or impulse buying is an unplanned decision to buy a product or service,

made just before a purchase. It is a spontaneous, immediate purchase without pre-shopping
intentions either to buy a specific product category or to fulfil a specific buying task (Beatty &
Ferrell, 1998). Any person who tends to make such purchases is referred to as an impulse
purchaser or impulse buyer. Impulse buying disturbs the usual decision making models in
consumers' brains. The logical order of the consumers' movements is replaced with an irrational
moment of self-indulgence. Research findings propose that emotions and feelings; both
positive and negative, show a decisive role in purchasing, triggered by seeing the product or
upon exposure to a well-crafted promotional communication.

1.1. Study Problem Outline

Researchers have been fascinated in the field of impulse buying for the past sixty years.
Numerous research on impulse purchasing has been conducted in developed countries
like Canada, Norway, England, America, etc and developing countries like China, Korea,
India, Lithuania, Thailand, Philippines, Poland, Indonesia, Pakistan, etc. In those
researches, researchers have mostly focused on identifying the general factors that
increase impulse buying.

With the increasing number of shopping centres and supermarkets, increase in disposable
income, rising independence of youth consumers, combined family structure shrinking
to small size, exposure of a consumer to hundreds of advertising messages in a day,
access to online retailers, access to Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and Point of
Sales (POS) terminals favouring debit/credit card conveniences, impulsive buying is
rising among Sri Lanka consumers too. Furthermore, marketers and supermarket owners
capitalize on this phenomenon by stimulating customers to purchase based on a range of
attractive store-related attributes (display, store layout, ambiance, and position of
merchandise) and decent service excellence.

However, in case of Sri Lanka, though impulse purchase is a common affair, there is not
sufficient research on this phenomenon. Some parts may have been touched upon but a
solid research is yet to be done.
 1.2. Rationale for the Study

The findings resulting from this research are of academic advantage and contribute to the
existing knowledge of the researched area, thus benefiting other student and non-student
researchers. It is also helpful particularly to marketers/owners of supermarkets and retail
stores to better understand their consumers and occasion where the consumers display
irrational purchases in Sri Lanka. Accordingly, they can take advantage of this and
present stimuli in supermarket settings that trigger such behaviour among consumers of
Sri Lanka. In addition, this research helps consumers gain an insight into the true reasons
behind their impulsive buying behaviour in a supermarket setting. Many a times,
consumers themselves are unclear about why they purchase more than what they had
initially thought before entering a supermarket/retail stores.

1.3. Research Objectives

The main research objectives to identify the impulsive buying behaviour among FMCG
consumers of highly residential areas in Sri Lanka with special emphasise to Keells Super
customers of Thimbirigasyaya.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Literature Review

According to past studies, impulsive buying is a distinctive aspect among American

consumers. Research conducted in the United States and Great Britain has shown that
factors like consumers’ mood, emotional state, national culture and demographic factors
influence impulsive buying behaviour. Nevertheless it has also gained its pace in Asian
markets like China, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Pakistan. Marketing
innovations like credit cards, debit cards, 24- hour retailing and online shopping are
contributing in impulse buying.

Researchers have also found that Indian consumers have diametrically changed in terms
of their shopping behaviour and impulse buying is emerging as a highly noticeable
behaviour due to entry of foreign products in Indian market, growth in organized retail
industry, increasing disposable income, favourable demographic segmentation and
changing culture & lifestyle (Muruganantham and Bhakat, 2013). Researches of impulse
purchasing in sub-continent countries have observed that some variables like time
availability (Beatty & Ferrell, 1998), gender, mood, materialism, age, culture, availability
of money, product category (Mai et al., 2003) and product price (Wong and Zhou, 2004)
are common among such buyers in supermarket settings.

2.1.1. Impulsive Buying

Vishnu and Raheem (2013), Pakistani consumers are more likely to buy impulsively
when they see free product and price discounts offers by a store in case of FMCGs.
The income level, window displays and visual merchandising have important
influence on consumer’s behaviour, especially, a well decorated, pleasing and calm
store environment along with colourful surroundings. In addition, there is a difference
between male and female impulse buying behaviour where female consumers tend to
be more impulsive. The findings of this study is also backed up by other researches
done by V. (2014), Thakor and Prajapati (2012) and Verma and Verma (2012) where
the findings is similar for different product categories and demographic
characteristics. Vyas (2015), Consumers subconsciously assign subjective values to
package based on their colour, shape and basic materials. Thus different packaging
features have functional implications on users’ mind. Also, different demographic
variables like gender, age group, professional involvement and educational status
influence the response in packaging. Packing helps consumer to choose, get an
impression about the product and repurchase the product. It influences consumer
response towards the product, lead to impulsive buying and differentiate the brand.
Packaging strategies exert an influence on time taken for purchase, brand promotion
and communicate about the brand.

2.1.2. Mode of Consumers

Cho and et al. (2014), in-store browsing and positive mood of consumers are the
strongest influential predictors of impulse buying behaviour. Consumers with positive
mood inspire them to travel more sections and aisles in-store and encourages
individual consumers to have referenced groups of companies (friends, peers, family
members) with them in shopping trip in order to increase the level of consumers,
making them excited and elated, and responding more favourably to the surroundings
and products evaluation stimulus exposure.
2.1.3. Store Layout

Azim (2013), customers having high deal proneness attitude and exploratory, at the
presence of good dynamic store environment makes more impulse purchases. And to
increase the impulse buying behaviour of people, retailers have to give a good
atmosphere to their customers inside the store, and must know about different
customers’ tendency towards the sales promotions in order to attract the right
customers.

2.1.4. Cultural Values and Lifestyle

Bashir and et al. (2013), the impact of Cultural Values and Lifestyle on Impulse
Buying Behaviour in case of Pakistan is positive. There is a significant relationship
among all the variables of cultural values and life styles. The results also suggest that
impulse buying behaviour is predicted by security, life satisfaction, gender role,
financial satisfaction, in group contact and lifestyle variables of cultural values and
lifestyles of Pakistani consumers. Ekeng and et al. (2012), demographic characteristics
have a significant influence on impulse buying. Impulse buying differs significantly
between male and female shoppers where the phenomenon is more common among
female shoppers due to their likeness and spontaneous attraction to fancy products.
Similarly age of shoppers and impulse buying behaviour are inversely related because
adolescents have no responsibility of raising families and they do not bother about the
way they spend money even if it is unplanned as compared to older people. In addition,
an increase in income of consumers makes them prodigal in spending and may
influence to buy products unplanned. More educated consumers are likely to shop
impulsively as they are influenced by their position and placement in society.

2.1.5. Promotional Offers

Saraswat and et al. (2012), middle income group in Noida city, India are more likely
to do impulsive buying because of economic reasons as promotional offers help in
getting monetary benefits. Different dynamics of advertisement like advertisement of
product in print and visual media, advertisement by celebrities, advertisement using
3-D effect, hoarding and pamphlets of product and event organized by the
organization positively affect majority of respondents into impulse buying. This
reflects a pivotal relationship between respondents’ impulse buying behaviours and
impact of advertising campaign used in practice to enhance impulse purchase
decisions. Chen (2008), product type plays a major role in impulse buying among
young generation in Taiwan. Impulsive buying tendency and involvement with
clothing products are positively associated with traditional store shopping, but not
online. For computer peripherals, higher impulsive buying tendency and higher
product participation are positively related with higher impulse buying online, but not
in-store shopping. In addition, impulsive buying tendency and product involvement
are good predictors of impulse purchase for clothing but not sufficient for computer
peripherals in traditional store shopping. Another major finding outlines the emerging
role of the Internet as a competing marketing channel. Products like clothing cannot
be tried on and can be presented only in pictures and words online, greatly inhibiting
the likelihood of impulse buying compared to in-store shopping. However, the same
does not apply for computer peripherals.

According to Banks & Moorthy (1999), sales promotion led to sudden increase
of sales experienced by retailers due to price-consciousness of consumers. Sinha
& Smith (2000), opinioned that consumer would be easily swayed to buy products as
there is no extra cost by consumers. Blackwell et al (2001) identified that price
discounts play a significant role in influencing consumer product trial behaviour
which indirectly attracts new consumer. According to Shilpa Aggrawal & Amit
Aggrawal (2012), pricing of product has an impact in deriving consumer perception
and the extent to which perception is influenced, is derived from the nature of
consumer behaviour. Based on the relationship the following research question has
been developed.

2.1.6. Availability of the Money

Beatty and Ferrell (1998) mention that, consumer perception about the money what
they have in their hand to spend, makes considerable impact on buying behaviour.
Badgaiyan, & Verma (2015) highlight that, the availability of money has identified as
one of the important facilitating factor for impulsive buying. Beatty and Ferrell (1998)
further authors explain that, perception of greater availability of money tends to
increase feeling in shopping trip and it makes a strong urge to buy impulsively. As a
consequence of feeling of availability of greater financial possessions, decline the
negative feeling which can be produced from the frustration with the inability to access
the affordable items encountered in the shop (Dinesha, 2014). Huang and Hsieh
(2011), also have explained similar idea, shopper tend to elicit positive emotions and
Based on the relationship the following research question has been developed.

2.1.7. Psychological Price

During psychological price promotion, the pull to consumer primarily reflects in price,
and consequently it is necessary to find out the fundamental cause of what frameworks
the different price promotion presentations will bring better results. Nevertheless, how
different applications of the same price promotion affect consumers’ perceptions of
the promotion and their impulsive purchase decisions has been insufficiently studied.
In the assessment of a stimulated price, framing may affect consumers’ estimates of
the promotion value (e.g., Krishna et al., 2002) and thus, current choice [2]. Devon
Del Vecchio et al. (2007) [3] found that promotion frame (percentage-off versus cents-
off) moderates the effect of promotion depth on post-promotion price expectations and
choice. Shih-fen S Chen et al. (1998) [4] has framed a price reduction in percentage
versus dollar terms on either a high-pricing or a low-pricing product. For the high-
pricing product, a price reduction framed in dollar terms seemed more sig-nificant
than the same price reduction framed in percentage terms. Furthermore, whether
consumers process price information in an absolute or relative sense affects their
perceptions of a price discount (Grewal and Mar-morstein, 1994; Heath, Chatterjee,
and France, 1995) [5] [6]. Some researchers from the view of information processing
to explore the process of consumer perception of price discounts and try to explain the
mechanism for consumer to underestimate the price discount. Inaccurate calculation
of the price promotions often leads to underestimation of the price discount (Kim and
Kramer, 2006) [7]. Meanwhile, a study by Kim and Kramer (2006) [8] found that price
discount based on percentage played a positive impact on consumer novelty perceived
savings and purchase intention, that is, the more innovative in the form of price
discounts, the more savings and purchase intention consumer would feel. Yet there is
still lack of research from the prospect of consumers’ regret feeling to explore the
influence of different price promotion (based on the amount of money vs. based on
percentage-off) on consumers’ perception of price discount and impulse buying.
 2.2. Research Questions

A. Is there any relationship between Availability of Money and Impulsive Buying?

B. Is there any relationship between Product Promotion and Impulsive Buying?
C. Is there any relationship between Psychological pricing and Impulsive Buying?
D. Is there any relationship between Store Layout and Impulsive Buying?

3. Research Methodology

3.1. Conceptual Framework

The theoretical framework was adapted from the research conducted by Vishnu and
Raheem (2013) which was carried out to identify the factors of impulsive buying
behaviour for FMCGs in Larkana, Pakistan. This framework will be modified to Sri
Lanka Context.

3.2. Hypotheses

HO There is no relationship between Availability of Money and Impulsive Buying

H1 There is relationship between Availability of Money and Impulsive Buying

HO There is no relationship between Product Promotion and Impulsive Buying

H1 There is relationship between Product Promotion and Impulsive Buying

HO There is no relationship between Psychological pricing and Impulsive Buying

H1 There is relationship between Psychological pricing and Impulsive Buying

HO There is no relationship between Store Layout and Impulsive Buying

H1 There is relationship between Store Layout and Impulsive Buying
3.3. Research Design

This research philosophy is positivism and approach will be deductive. As Johnson and
Clark (2006) note, as business and management researchers we need to be aware of the
philosophical commitments we make through our choice of research strategy since this
has significant impact not only on what we do but we understand what it is we are
investigating. Therefore, the research is positivism as the researcher will be trying to find
the answer by the philosophical stance of the natural science by Survey Strategy using
questionnaires which will be Mono method quantitative methodological choice.

This research will be a descriptive research, because the researcher will be collecting data
of consumers to understand their profile. According to Robson (2002), the object of
descriptive research is ‘to portray an accurate profile of persons, events or situations’
(Robson 2002:59).

The research will be cross-sectional, because we recognise that most research projects
undertaken for academic courses are necessarily time constrained.

3.4. Sampling Framework

According to Kumara, S. (2019), there are 1212 people visit Keells outlet,
Thimbirigasyaya. This includes the buyer, buyers family, freinds and others who
accompany the buyer. According Kumara, S. (2019), only 837 transation happends
averagly per day. Which will be 311,364 annual transations happens at the Keells Super,
Thimbirigasyaya, which is 25,947 transsation per month. It is further narrowed to show
that per day atleast 837 transation happens daily. According to the above data the
researcher’s total sample will be 311,364 to do the research, but according to Krejcie, R,
and Morgan, D. (1970), based on the calculator, the sample applicable for this study will
be 384, assuming a sample error of 0.5.
 (Source - Krejcie & Morgan, 1970)
3.5. Sample Technique & Data Collection

In this study, stratified random sampling method will be used among the visitors of the
Keells outlet, Thimbirigasyaya. A structured questionnaire with the topic “Factors
affecting impulsive buying behaviour among consumers at Keells Super Market,
Thimbirigasyaya will be prepared and distributed among desired sample.

To strengthen study, primary data will be collected from five respondanats per day uptill
seventy seven days which will equal the total sample of 384. This is to make sure that
consumers data is not collected in a particular time horison but thorught out two months
who will have various behavioulra change, mentally and physically which will affect
thier impulsive buying behaviour. Those five respondants will selected during morning
hours and evening hours, where two will be morning and three will be in the evening
respectively. The researcher will visit to fill out the questionnaire ensuring that those
respondents belonged to various backgrounds with different demographic variables.
Data collected will be summarized in the data sheet and average for each variable will be
formulated through SPSS software and hypothesis will be tested using correlation
analysis. To test the hypothesis chi-square test or ANOVA test will be used. Secondary
data will be analysed using bar charts, pie charts, line charts etc.

3.6. Reliability & Validity

Construction of the questionnaire in a simple and easy to understand, using Likert Scale.
To check the consistency of the questionnaires across time and items, questionnaire will
be given to 4 people 2 times with an interval of 4 days to see the reliability of the
questionnaire and further if needed, questionnaire will be edited accordingly. Validity of
the questionnaire also will be checked to see the extent to which the scores actually
represent the variable they the researcher are intend to.

3.7. Delimitation

Often customers are unaware of their impulsive buying behaviour and may
unintentionally manipulate their answers when filling the survey questionnaire.
Sometimes, consumers might justify their purchases as being planned and rational rather
than being impulsive. Due to the limited time and budget, the study will be conducted in
within Colombo only with a limited number of respondents at the Keells Super,
Thimbirigasyaya. Number of variables taken into consideration for evaluation will be
limited. Entire branch should have been analysed for the best results. Finance and Data
accessibility are difficult.

3.8. Ethical Consideration

According to Rosnow, R. (2005), participants consent is very important, researcher will

be getting their consent through the questionnaire and explain the study before continuing
the survey and written consent will be taken. Anonymity (privacy) of research subjects
will be kept highly confidential. Storage of data will kept locked in a safe drawer to make
sure no one else except for the research, can have accesses to the data. Researcher will
avoid risk of psychological harm or hurt to the respondents. Also the researcher will
avoid collecting data from differently abled people, elderly people & children to validate
the results derive from the questionnaire.
Researcher will respect and take accountable of viewpoint and experience of the
respondents while maintaining their ddignity, respect for their welfare, rights and safety.
Very importantly researcher will bring integrity, fairness and honesty to the entire
research study done during the next 6 months.

3.9. Gantt Chart

Reference

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 IMPULSIVE BUYING BEHAVIOUR AMONG FMCG CONSUMERS

As a part of Research Project for my MBA degree, I am conducting a research on the above
topic. The information provided will be confidential and solely be used for academic purpose.
Therefore, I kindly request you to allot few minutes to complete the following questionnaire as
required. Your precious time and effort is highly valued and appreciated.

Please tick one  for each criteria group

Q1. Marital Status

1. Single
2. Married

Q2. Monthly Income or pocket money received

1. Less than Rs. 10,000
2. Rs. 10,000 – 20,000
3. Rs. 20,000 – 50,000
4. Rs. 50,000 and above

Q3. How often do you go to supermarket for shopping?

1. Once a week 4. Once in a month
2. 2-3 times a week 5. Never
3. Once in 14 days 6. Very less

Q4. You go to a supermarket to buy certain items but you end up buying more than what you
intended to. Has this ever happened to you? Impulsive Buying
1. Yes 2. No
Q5. I have made the following impulsive decisions in the past. How strongly do you agree or
disagree with each of the following situations.

Strongly Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly

Agree Disagree
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
I have difficulty controlling my urge to
buy when I see a good offer (like Buy 1
Get 1 Free, limited stock, limited time)
Sale/clearance signs are a reason to buy
things on whim.
Discount on a product induces me to
buy more.
The satisfaction of receiving a coupon
or points motivates me to buy more.

Since I am not the bread earner of my

family, I spend my earning without
careful planning.
I go to supermarket for shopping within
first week of receiving salary/pocket
money.
I tend to shop more than what is needed
when I have cash in hand.

I am a price sensitive person

When I see prices like Rs. 199,
Rs. 248, Rs. 599 I definitely buy the
products

Sometimes I go to a supermarket just

because they have an interesting
window display.
I am attracted to buy product that has a
big or eye catching display in
supermarket.
I find it comfortable to shop in a
supermarket with directional signage.