Teens as impulsive buyers: what is the role of price?

Purpose Considering that retailers view impulse buying as an important component of their business (around 75 per cent of the purchases are unplanned) and considering also that teens often do some shopping in autonomy and represent an important financial power, the purpose of this paper is to fill the lack of studies concerning adolescent consumers impulse shopping behaviours. This paper investigates the relationships between the positive (prestige sensitivity, price quality schema) and the negative (price consciousness, value consciousness, price mavenism, sales proneness) role of price in teens’ impulse buyings. Design/methodology/approach The test of the hypotheses has been achieved on a sample of 325 French teens (age between 14 and 18) using MANOVA. Previously, respondents were split in two groups which are impulsive buyers and non-impulsive buyers. Findings Findings show clearly differences between teens’ impulsive buyings and teens’ non-impulsive buyings. Teens’ as impulsive buyers possess more prestige sensitivity, price-quality schema, price mavenism, sale proneness and less price consciousness and value consciousness than non-impulsive buyers. Moreover, females adolescents are more inclined to be impulsive buyers than males adolescents. Originality/value Not only it is one of the rare studies that investigates on teens’ impulsive buying but above all, it is the only study that takes into consideration the role of price perception, while a price has to be paid in order to buy.