Understanding Online Impulse Buying Behavior in Social Commerce: A Systematic Literature Review

In the past few years, online impulse purchase has garnered attention from researchers in various fields, especially noted in the relatively new field of social commerce (S-commerce). This interactive envronment is a full of impulse buying stimulators. However, no previous studies have been conducted to evaluate the status of the research about online impulse buying behavior (IBB) in S-commerce. Hence, the authors reviewed studies published between 2005 and 2019, to gain an insight into IBB. The authors used an input-moderator-mediator-output model for identifying and classifying factors that influence consumer's online IBB in S-commerce. The authors adopted a review protocol that involved two stages (i.e., automatic and manual), and identified 68 studies that addressed online IBB, of which 24 studies focused on IBB in S-commerce. The systematic review results indicated that survey-based studies (83%) and experiment methods (17%) were prevalent in online IBB in S-commerce. The authors also noted that a majority of existing studies adopted stimulus-organism-response. In this study, the factors that influence online IBB in S-commerce were classified, and a causal-chain framework for online impulse buying was developed. Finally, the authors made recommendations for future research in this field.