I See, i Buy, I Regret: An Investigation of The Relationship Between Demographic Variables and Post-Purchase Regret of impulse Buying

Abstract

Background: This study aims to investigate the association between demographic variables like age, income & gender and Post Purchase Regret due to unplanned or Impulsive Buying behaviour. The importance of this study is to provide an insight to marketers about customers’ impulse buying and their post purchase regret. It is particularly important to examine the impact of impulsivity on post purchase behaviour of customers.

Objective: The purpose of this paper was to identify the relationship between post purchase regret and impulsive purchase and the influence of age, gender and income on impulse buying, which further lead to post purchase regret.

Methods: The sample consisted of 308 respondents from Western Uttar Pradesh, India, majority of respondents (89%) belong to 15 to 30-year age group (46.8% male and 53.2% female). The Karl Pearson’s Coefficient of correlation, Regression, ANOVA were used to check the relationship between said variables.

Results: The correlation result which signified a positive relationship between impulsive buying and post purchase regret. However, there were no significant impact of age; gender and income on post purchase regret due to impulsive buying as the P Value of AVOVA for PPR and IB were more than .05 for age, gender and income. The original contribution of this study has come from a lack of research in Western UP on unplanned buying and Post Purchase Regret.

Conclusion and Scope: The results indicate that the relation between impulsive buying behaviour and post purchase regret are related to each other and it is important for the marketers to identify those variables, which largely influence impulsivity among the customers. The present research provides a scope for the future researchers to investigate the influence of demographic variables other than the age, gender and income that can influence impulse buying.

Limitations: The present has been conducted in western Uttar Pradesh only and hence the results cannot be generalized for the universe.