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Shopping is already an important part of our daily lives. However, many purchases may be unplanned, and even sudden, while they tend to be initiated on the spot and greatly related to the strong desire and feelings of joy and excitement (Wu et al., 2016). This purchase is often referred to as impulse buying. It has three key features, which are unplanned, the result of an exposure to a stimulus, and decided “on-the-spot” (Piron, 1991). Impulse buying is popular in online settings. Donthu & Garcia (1999) found that online shoppers were more impulsive than offline shoppers. A high proportion of 40% of online consumers considers themselves as impulse shoppers (Verhagen and van Dolen, 2011; Huang and Kuo, 2012; Liu et al., 2013). In the United States, more than 48% of consumers are estimated to have an online impulse buying experience (GSI Commerce, 2008). Therefore, the study of impulse buying is an important area of research in electronic commerce (e-commerce) (Huang and Kuo, 2012).
The “Double 11” promotion is a new kind of online promotion activities in China recently, which is conducted in November 11th every year by those biggest e-commerce platforms in China. In 2009, as the biggest B2C platform in China, Tmall.com launched the “Double 11” promotion for the first time, which was held on November 11th. It attracted a great number of consumers and the sales on Tmall.com reached 50 million RMB. After that, other e-commerce platforms in China such as JD.com and Suning.com joined the “Double 11” promotion, making the “Double 11” promotion the largest online commercial activity in China. The data released by Alibaba Group (http://www.alibabagroup.com), shows that the sales of the “Double 11” promotion on Tmall.com was 91.2 billion RMB in the year of 2015. The “Double 11” promotion now has become the world's largest online shopping festival.
With the development of mobile communication technology and intelligent terminal, more and more people use mobile terminals for shopping on the internet in China. According to new data from CNNIC, by December 2015, the number of mobile commerce (m-commerce) users is growing rapidly to 340 million, an increase of 43.9% (CNNIC, 2016). The usage rate of m-commerce is increased from 42.4% to 54.8%. In particular, more and more customers use mobile devices for shopping in the “Double 11” promotion. In 2015, the sales of mobile commerce of Tmall.com were 62.6 billion RMB in the “Double 11” promotion, accounting for 68% of total sales. The sales of the “Double 11”promotion on JD.com in 2015 breakthrough 10 billion RMB, in which mobile turnover of 74 billion RMB, accounting for 74%.
A large online promotion activity provides a different shopping context for mobile users where situational variables [including promotion, social environment, mobile website characteristics, time and money pressure] impact consumer behaviors simultaneously. Due to limitations in the mobile terminal screen size, battery power, computing power, storage capacity, connection speed, flow rates and other factors, mobile users are more prone to impulsive in the large online promotion activity. According to a report from Rackspace, impulse purchases in the UK have increased by an estimated £1.1 billion a year thanks to the online shopping convenience offered by smartphones, iPads and other tablet computers (Rackspace, 2014). There has been extensive research on examined how different factors related to information systems artifacts influence online impulse buying in an e-commerce context. Nonetheless, to the best of our knowledge, scholars rarely involve empirical investigation of mobile users’ impulse buying in a large online promotion activity, and this paper will fill this gap in the literature.