Customer impulse shopping in airports

Abstract

Purpose

Impulse purchases are a phenomenon of interest in recent years that provides a high revenue stream for companies compared to planned purchases. Airports are a unique shopping environment. Travellers usually need to arrive at the airport early and can only utilise limited time to shop at duty-free stores, which makes the shopping experience time-constrained and has the potential to make impulse purchases. The main purpose of this research is to create a model to examine whether “time pressure” and “hedonic shopping motivation” lead to impulse shopping through the formation of “positive emotion” in the context of airport duty-free shops.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in this study. The data collection for this study targeted individuals who had previously used airline services for international travel and visited duty-free shops at international airports. A total of 502 valid subjects participated in this survey.

Findings

The findings indicated that time pressure and consumers’ hedonic motivations have a positive impact on emotions. Positive emotions have a positive impact on the occurrence of impulse purchases. Music and light can moderate the impact of hedonic motivation on emotion but cannot reduce the influence of time pressure on emotion. Social factor significantly moderates the positive association between hedonic shopping motivation and emotion.

Originality/value

The research collected data from various international airports and social media, enabling the findings to be generalised.

Citation

Liang, C.-C. and Yu, A.P.-I. (2024), "Customer impulse shopping in airports", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 52 No. 3, pp. 372-385. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJRDM-06-2023-0395