The Impact of Socio-Cultural Factors in Impulse Purchasing Behaviour of Clothes in Bangladesh

Abstract

The study aims to understand the impact of demographic factors- age, gender,
household income, and cultural dimensions- individualism/collectivism and
power-distance beliefs on impulse purchase tendency among Bangladeshi
consumers. Although the author planned and started with a mall-intercept
survey method, however, due to the situation arising from the COVID-19
pandemic, he had to shift to using an online questionnaire survey. To analyze
the results and test the hypotheses, the author undertook factor analysis and
multi-linear regression. The study revealed that only household income shows
a positive association with impulse purchase behavior. Surprisingly, there was
no association between any of the cultural dimensions to impulse purchasing
tendency. At the same time, an interesting observation was that Generation Z
consumers exhibit more impulsive purchasing tendencies than their Generation
Y counterparts. It is worth mentioning, the use of convenience sampling meant
an overrepresentation of two generations (Gen Z and Gen Y). While this led
to a new revelation about the purchasing tendencies of consumers of these
generations, future research with a larger sample can lead to enhancing the
generalization of the findings. The study provides a holistic model incorporating
cultural dimensions and demographic factors to expand the understanding
of these factors’ influence on consumer impulse purchasing tendency for an
emerging nation.