The impact of e-retailer personality and website quality on online impulse buying

The development of information technology and the proliferation of e-commerce make online shopping more and more popular. Recent studies indicate that in the modern world, most shoppers purchased products spontaneously and highlighted the necessity of in-depth understanding of impulse buying as an emerging phenomenon in marketing literature. A large number of studies focus on the factors effective on consumers’ impulse buying in brick and mortar retailers but rare research investigate these factors in online environment. There are two key perspectives on the factors effective on impulse buying: a customer’s inherent characters and his/her current state of mind. Based on the self-congruity theory and latent state-trait theory, this study considered this concept in two-sided approach: the state of mind incurred in the shopping environment (website quality) and a particular personal characteristics inherent to the individual customer (e-retailer personality). This paper adapted the concept of retail brand/store personality from brick and mortar context to internet marketing by investigating the impact of e-retailer personality on website quality and impulse buying. Data were collected from 563 online shoppers in Vietnam by online survey and analyzed with Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results indicate some practical implications for website design and enhancing impulsive buying.