The Effect of Emotional Attachment on the Impulse Purchasing Behavior: A Case of TV Home Shopping

Abstract

TV home shopping is one of marketing strategies under the direct response marketing paradigm. This strategy does not emphasize on the brand creation or using traditional marketing channels but it aims to attract the consumer emotionally while immediate purchase of the customers is expected. TV home shopping business is now expanding in Thai market. There are couple TV channels operating as the TV home shopping channels while several TV home shopping programs are presenting on many cable and free TV channels throughout the day. TV home shopping is different from other marketing channels in various aspects such as nature of the TV program that is active and stimulating, products characteristics that are mostly different from the products available on the traditional channels, price and promotion which is usually the highlight of the TV shopping, as well as convenience to buy from the TV program. It is no need for the customers to leave their home to search and buy products. Just watching TV and making a phone call , the products can be delivered, door-to-door, to their home. Impulse purchasing behavior of the customers is the key goal of the marketers when using this strategy. This research aims to identify the factors that influence customer's impulse purchasing intention to buy products from the TV home shopping programs. Apart from the aforementioned factors, mediating roles of emotional response and emotional attachment that are activated when watching the TV home shopping program are emphasized. The questionnaire survey was designed. A total of 949 data sets from customers who have and have no direct expenence on buying from TV home shopping program were collected. Structural equation modeling was performed to test the relationship among all proposed factors. The results indicated that attractiveness of the TV program, product differentiation, and price & promotion had positive and significant influence on the emotional response and emotional attachment but trustworthiness of the TV program had no influence on both emotional constructs. Price and promotion and emotional attachment were found to have direct influence on the impulse purchasing intention. Indirect _ influences of attractiveness of the program and product differentiation through emotional response and emotional attachment were illustrated but the direct influences of these factors were not found. Trustworthiness of the program, convenience to buy, uncertainty on the buying process and emotional response had no significant influence on the impulse purchase. Some different impulse purchasing process of the experienced and non-experienced customers was found. First, the influence of attractiveness of the TV program on emotional response is significantly positive for the non-experience customers but not significant for the experienced customers. Second, the impact sizes of emotional response on impulse purchase were different between the two groups. However, both of them were not significant. Third, the influence of the emotional attachment on the impulse purchase of the non-experienced customers was higher than that of the experienced customers.