Psychological factors influencing impulse buying in E-commerce

It is a mixed-methods study, which investigates psychological determinants of impulse buying in e-commerce by integrating both a primary quantitative survey and a specific web-based qualitative review. With multi-item measures (of dispositional impulsivity, hedonic orientation, emotional arousal, decision fatigue, promotions, scarcity, personalization, reviews, influencer signals, and website/app aesthetics, checkout convenience, perceived trust) to support them, the model accounted for a good deal of variance in self-reported impulse buying (R² ≈ 0.63). The results of the multivariate analysis indicate that platform characteristics, such as good product pages and easy checkout, and social influence (reviews, friends, influencers) are the most significant unique predictors of impulse buying. They were also affected by decision fatigue which was independent; the marketing cues and personalization had moderate effects. Trait impulsivity and perceived trust had a bivariate relationship with impulse buying but did not contribute extra explanatory strength in the complete model indicating that their impact is mediated by proximal platform and situational antecedents. These findings were supported by the qualitative review with the real-life examples of the impulse conversion through User Interface (UI) and socially approved. Practical implications point to putting more emphasis on User Experience (UX), a smoother buying experience, and genuine social validation to affect unthought-out buying ethically. Weaknesses such as non-probability sampling, self-report measure and cross-sectional design should be considered; future study needs to incorporate behavioural logs or experiment to identify causal mechanisms.