Beyond Impulse Buying Propensity: Predicting Unplanned Purchase Frequency and Spending Among Young Consumers

Abstract

The present study utilizes a quantitative cross-sectional survey of 154 valid subjects (respondents) after removing invalid or ineligible subjects, to determine if two motivational processes, discount responsiveness and brand perception, as well as impulse buying tendencies, can predict how often young adults (ages 18–25) make unplanned purchases, and how much money they spend on unplanned purchases. Impulse buying has been studied in relation to promotional cues, brand-related factors, and susceptibility to impulse buying, but prior studies have measured it more as an overall tendency or likelihood of purchase than as a recent behavior with measurable financial consequences. Using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, Spearman correlations, and multiple regression models, the data were analyzed to examine the relationships of discount responsiveness, brand perception, and impulse-buying tendencies with the frequency and monetary value of unplanned purchases. Approximately 90% of the young adults sampled made at least one unplanned purchase in the previous 30 days, and over one-third of respondents reported spending at least 5,000 rubles on such purchases. Impulse-buying tendencies were consistently the strongest predictors of both the frequency of unplanned purchases and the amount spent on them, while discount responsiveness and brand perception were only descriptively relevant and did not independently predict either outcome. The results of this study indicate that impulse buying should be viewed not only as a psychological tendency but also as a behavior with measurable financial consequences.

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