Determine Impact of Situational Factors in Impulse Buying Behaviour of Young Consumers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper focused on observing the impact of situational factors: availability of money and time for shopping and in-store promotions to the impulse buying behaviour of young consumers in Sri Lanka. In other word, it concerns behavioural differences of consumers while they are having enough money, time for buying fashion apparels. There can be seen, significant conceptual gap in respective study context relevant to most of the Asian countries and as far as researcher’s knowledge, the researcher could not find any study in Sri Lanka in regard to the fashion apparels impulse buying behavior. Quantitative study was conducted to examine the relationship of selected variables. The sample was selected conveniently, based on demographic variables such as, gender, and income level. According to the referred literature, male and female consumers show significant differences based on impulsive behaviour. As similarly, income level of the consumer make direct influence to the way of consumers take decision to buy something impulsively than they haven’t enough money. Due to this reasons, sample composed with gender base and the income level of the respondents. It's consisted with 150 undergraduates from faculty of management and Finance, University of Ruhuna, Matara, Sri Lanka by representing both gender groups. The survey was employed as the tool to collect primary data and used self-administered questionnaire which was built up focusing on demographic factors as first part and the questions related to the impulse buying behaviour, availability of time and money as well as in-store promotions as the second part of the questionnaire. The dependent variable of the study is consumers impulse buying behaviour was tested through main 05 questions adopted from past research study. As an example, “I cannot resist buying clothing if I really like i t , I buy anything I suddenly feel compelled to buy , I often buy clothes while I am out doing other things , I buy clothing I like without a lot of thinking , I,buy things setting by the register at the last minute”. Similarly two independent variables also were tested throughout several questions adopted from past research studies. The findings revealed that, gender is slightly affected of decisions of the impulse buying behaviour of young consumers in Sri Lanka. Further, availability of money does significantly impact for impulse decisions of fashion apparels in this group while the Availability of time and in-store promotion does not.