Consumer Impetuosity in M-Commerce: Designing Scale to Measure the Shopping Behavior

Introduction

Impulse buying permeates every dimension of marketing. In branding, the inception of Nike’s campaign ´Just do it’ in 1988 (Conlon, 2015) that played with the concept of doing things without thinking, thus prompting impulsivity, helped the brand to foster their sales in the time span of a decade. In retailing, Costco has been displaying only the most popular items on the shelves and create a sense of urgency by rotating the products on a seasonal basis in order to increase product consumption and to generate among their customers the need to buy suddenly before the season is over (Virgin, 2011). The convergence of marketing strategies and tactics along with the advent of Internet-based retailing channels have made feasible the appearance of novel sales contexts which unique features have received little attention. This is the case of mobile commerce or m-commerce, as the ability to perform transactions using any wireless device connected to Internet practically with no time or space constraints on the consumer’s preferences (Balasubramanian et al., 2002). The increasing use of mobile devices among consumers together with other current digital trends such as the use of live streaming applications and content sharing in real time, has strengthened the implementation of new digital marketing strategies and empowered consumers, communities and societies in whole (OECD, 2014). Actually, Worldwide Internet penetration reached 38.1% of global population in 2013 (Internet Society, 2015). Furthermore, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in less than two years, the number of pages viewed from mobile devices, on a sample of 3 million websites monitored, rose from 11.7% to 24.3% worldwide, and from about 15% to more than 30% when tablets are included. Together businesses and consumers have benefited from mobile commerce’s main advantages such as efficiency, convenience, competitive prices and variety; however, its use also poses new challenges. Therefore, since traditional marketing strategies have become obsolete and more emphasis on latent needs is required, the exponential growth of mobile devices usage has captured the attention from both scholars and practitioners. For instance, the increasing preference for social networks through mobiles has unleashed new business opportunities that must be addressed in order to succeed in the new digital arena. The evidence for consumers’ mobile preference can be perceived through statistical data generated by the most popular social network around the world, Facebook. Active Facebook users connecting to the social network with a mobile passed from 28% of all users at the end of 2009 to over 75% at the end of 2013 while the revenue Facebook declared from mobile advertising rose from 13% of total revenues in 2012 to 40% in 2013 (OECD, 2014). In Latin America, about 60% of Internet transactions are carried out using mobile devices and it is expected to reach 100% by 2017 (Internet Society, 2015). Moreover, according to recent surveys, 81% of spontaneous shopping is associated to smartphones (Google, 2012).

In brief, even though current e-commerce and m-commerce developments combined with mobile devices’ preference yield improvements in consumer welfare and offer several promising marketing activities, including viral marketing campaigns for mobiles, the use of influencer marketing and programmatic content management, the success of its application, which depends on the consumers’ purchase, remains scarcely studied (Pescher et al., 2014). Therefore, it is important to identify and understand the factors that influence consumer behavior via mobile devices. For the present study, the information obtained will lay the foundation for developing a reliable and valid scale of impulsiveness on m-purchases by analyzing what is the meaning of impulse buying in the context of mobile devices, in order to understand better the main factors involved in this process. In summary, this paper aims: