Analysis of Impulse Buying Behaviour of Consumer During COVID-19: An Empirical Study

This article attempts to analyse the changes occurred in the behaviour of the customer for online buying of fashion products. The prime objective of this study is to bridge the gap by contributing to the literature about the impact of pandemic on consumer buying tendencies for fashion industry. This study proposes a model for impulse buying of fashion apparel based on consumers’ shopping behaviour during COVID-19 pandemic. The conceptual model was developed using stimulus organism response (S-O-R) theory using fashion involvement (FI), hedonic shopping value (HSV) and sales promotion (SP) as independent variables, positive emotions (PE) as a mediating variable and impulse buying (IB) as a dependent variable. The data was collected from 569 respondents from central Indian region, the collected data was analysed using PLS-SEM 3 software. The importance performance map analysis (IPMA) was used to understand the accurate performance of variables. The result shows the significant and positive impact of HSV and PE on IB, unlike FI and SP which were not showing significant impact. Moreover, PE is a significant mediator in the relationship of the constructs. This study contributes by providing original insights into the IB literature. The analyses of IPMA will help the fashion industry to rebound after COVID-19.