An Empirical Study Of Using Unconscious "Self-control" Goal Priming To Reduce Impulse Buying Intention And Behavior

Impulse buying is becoming a more and more widespread consume behavior and has caused extensive attention from marketers and researchers. The existing studies mostly focus on the definition of impulse buying and investigate the possible influence factors and mechanism of impulse buying. Only very few researchers explored how to reduce the impulse buying behavior. This article aims to increase the relevant research results.The opinion that impulse buying behavior is a result of consumer’s self-control failure is generally accepted by many researchers. When consumers have a goal to save money, he or she needs to suppress buying impulse as much as possible to reduce unnecessary purchases. If failure occurs at this time, the impulse buying behavior will happen to consumer. Usually, we can improve self-control by set an appropriate goal first, then monitor differences between behavior and goal and change behavior once find differences. Bargh’s auto-motive model hypothesis that goal related clues appear in the environment can unconsciously activate this goal and trigger automatic goal pursuit. So we may also able to influence the individual’s self-control behavior through the way of goal priming. Researchers have found that unconsciously activated a healthy diet goal can lead to a healthier diet. Based on this result, it can be speculated that goal priming may also affect consumer’s self-control behavior(impulsive buying behavior). In addition,previous research results show that the current state of the individual and the motivation to pursue their goals will affect the effect of goal priming. So, whether goal priming will affects impulse buying behavior and whether recent "save money" target status will affect the effect of goal priming? These are the main contents of this study.Based on the auto-motive model, the current research combined the method of questionnaire and laboratory experiment to explore the influence of goal priming on impulse buying behavior. Study 1 investigates the influence of goal priming on impulse buying intention by the way of subliminal semantic priming paradigm. Because priming may also affect behavior through “the perception–behavior link”, which differs from the goal priming that is motivational, such as sustained activation of goal. In order to rule out the explanation of "perception behavior connection", we conducted study 2. Based on the results of previous studies, study 1 and study 2 screened people who have “saving money” goals recently, but did not set the control group(no recent "money") to compare with the priming group. As a result, the study 3 explored the impact of the recent "save money" target status on the priming effect.In the first study, we screened 40 subjects who likes eating snacks and have “saving money” goals recently. Adopted subliminal semantic priming paradigm to unconsciously priming the “saving money” goal of consumer and through simulated shopping task to measure participant’s impulse purchase intention, explored the influence of goal priming on peoples impulse purchase intention. The result shows that people who was primed “saving money” goal have lower impulse purchase intention than control group subjects and this result was not interfered by emotional variables.The independent variable and dependent variable of the study 2 is same as study 1, but insert a filling task between subliminal semantic priming paradigm and simulated shopping task to rule out the possible explanation of the "perception-behavior link". It revealed that although subliminal semantic priming task was ended 5 minutes ago, the goal priming effect still exists: people who was primed “saving money” goal have smaller impulse purchase intention than control group subjects. This result tips us that subliminal semantic priming affect impulse purchase intention by unconsciously activated "save money" goal and triggered the unconscious goals pursuit behavior rather than through the "perception-behavior link" to influence behavior.Study 3 screened 86 subjects who likes eating snacks and recently have or not have “save money” goal, half of them was randomly assigned to complete subliminal semantic priming task(priming or control). Different from the first and second study, the number of snacks impulse purchase by subject and buying impulse is dependent variables of study 3. The result of study 3 showed that the main effect of goal state was not significant, but the main effect of goal-priming manipulation and the interaction between the goal state and goal-priming conditions was significant. The further simple effect analysis found that, only when people recently have “save money” goal, the goal priming manipulation is effective. For the participants who recently have “save money” goal, unconsciously activated goal lead them to impulsively buy less snacks. But for the participants who recently don’t have “save money” goal, goal priming manipulation is invalid. The research also found that buying impulse was not affected by goal priming manipulation and recent goal state.According to the research, we came to the following conclusions:(1) The subliminal semantic priming can unconsciously activate “save money” goal and effectively reduce impulse purchase intention and behavior. Those results are not affected by emotional variables.(2) In this study, it is an unconscious activation of money saving goal rather than the "perception-behavior link" that affects the impulse buying intention.(3) The goal priming effect is constrained by recent goal state. There will be less impulsive buying behavior when subjects have a “save money” goal recently and accepted goal priming manipulation.(4) Buying impulse is not affected by goal priming manipulation.