The Influence Mechanism Of In-store Slack On Unplanned Purchases And Post-purchase Evaluation

Unplanned purchases are prevalent in daily life and companies often conduct promotion activities to stimulate consumers' unplanned purchases.When making the post-purchase evaluation,consumers often find that unplanned purchases bring about negative emotional experience such as disappointment and regret.Currently,most studies have analyzed how external environment,consumers' inherent personality traits and purchase situation have effects on unplanned purchases.Few studies have considered the whole shopping process and they have ignored how consumers take the initiative to strategically control over unplanned purchases.Studies have found that consumers make their shopping budgets referring to their shopping expenses before when they shopping in grocery stores and they tend to leave in-store slack in their shopping budgets.In-store slack is the room for spontaneous purchases and it sets a constraint on unplanned purchases.With the development of e-commerce,more and more consumers get used to shop online.Online promotion activities are easy to induce unplanned purchases and consumers need to have control over unplanned purchases.Based on related research,we propose that consumers try to learn from their offline shopping experiences and they also have in-store slack in online shopping budgets.In-store slack is an effective strategy for them to have control over unplanned purchases and improve their post-purchase evaluation.Specifically,the paper hopes to answer the following questions:Whether there is in-store slack in consumers,online shopping budgets?What is the relationship among in-store slack,unplanned purchase and post-purchase evaluation?Whether factors such as impulse buying tendency and promotion have effects on the relationship between in-store slack and unplanned purchase?To answer the above questions,the article conducted consumer surveys before and after the "Double 11" promotion activity in 2013 and 2014.The result demonstrates the existence of in-store slack in online shopping activities.What's more,it also shows that in-store slack has a direct negative effect on unplanned purchases and an indirect positive effect on post-purchase evaluation.Besides that,consumers impulse buying tendency,promotion degree and promotion range moderate the relationship between in-store slack and unplanned purchases.This study focuses on how consumers strategically have control over their shopping behaviors and it enriches research about unplanned purchase,post-purchase evaluation and self-control.Based on these results,the study gives suggestions for retailers and consumers.