Impulse Buying In The Post-Covid Era: The Role Of Task-Based And Hedonic Social E-Commerce Cues

ABSTRACT

Leveraging social media, social e-commerce (electronic commerce) has created a two-way reciprocal bridge between consumers and merchants, and it is becoming a new normalised purchasing platform in the post-COVID-19 era. Against this backdrop, consumers are highly susceptible to external stimulus cues that can lead to impulsive and irrational purchasing behaviour. Numerous works have identified various extrinsic cues that stimulate impulsive buying, but to date, there have been limited achievements on the impact of task-based and hedonic provocative cues on impulsive purchasing behaviour. To narrow the gap, this research, based on the S-O-R perspective, endeavours to examine the impact of three cues on the emotional response and impulse buying in social e-commerce in the post-COVID-19. We used a survey instrument to collect 264 empirical data from one demographic unit, the Chinese social e-commerce consumer, through a non-probability sampling strategy. After evaluation by AMOS-SEM, we confirmed that both ease of use and usefulness, two task-based social e-commerce cues, and hedonic cue-based entertainment all positively influence positive emotions, thereby promoting impulse buying. Our research not only adds theoretical value to impulse buying but also has positive implications for practitioners and policymakers developing social e-commerce marketing strategies in the post-COVID pandemic age.