What drives impulse buying behaviors in a mobile auction? The perspective of the Stimulus-Organism-Response model

Abstract The prevalence of smart devices and wireless networks has steered online traders toward mobile devices, which has promoted the rapid development of auction platforms in the mobile commerce market. Past studies have shown that about 40% of all online expenditures are impulse purchases, and that this proportion may have increased as mobile commerce has become more prevalent. However, only a few researchers have used the context of mobile auctions to explore the impulsive buying behaviors of consumers. Therefore, our study selects the mobile auction platform to explore how situational factors affect impulsive buying behavior. We integrate the S-O-R model, impulsivity traits and other external variables to establish our research model and hypotheses. Our results show that the personality factors of an impulsive buying tendency, normative evaluation, and positive affect are key determinants of impulse buying, while ubiquity, ease of use, information exchange, discounted price, and scarcity are important precursors. In addition, gender and platform categorizations are also used to classify the sample to determine the differences between groups defined by these classifications. Our results are useful to both researchers and mobile auction operators.