Explanation of impulse buying at shopping malls according to the role of salespersons’ adaptive selling behavior and background perceptions

Introduction: In the competitive atmosphere of today's world, selling more means success for producers and marketers. Sales are no longer possible without knowing consumer behavior. Impulse buying is one of the most important aspects of consumer behavior which involves a large amount of purchase by individuals. While there is intense competition in most markets, customers are exposed to many similar offers to choose a product, so they often cannot be sure of achieving all of their purchasing goals and, therefore, a risk is felt in most of their purchasing decisions. Companies and organizations may be eliminated from the competition without trusting customers and realizing the high quality of the products they offer. Considering the great influence of seller behavior on the buyer's decision, this research was conducted to investigate the role of adaptive sales behavior on impulse buying with an emphasis on the moderating roles of trust and perceived quality.
Methodology: This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of data collection and analysis. In this regard, a sample of 400 customers from Mashhad Proma shopping mall was selected through an available sampling method, and a research questionnaire was distributed among them.
The questionnaire included four categories of questions related to adaptive sales behavior, store brand trust, perceived quality of store products, and impulse buying. It was prepared in the form of 23 items. After its validity and reliability were confirmed, it was distributed among the participants. Also, after collecting data, structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses using the PLS software.
Results and Discussion: A t-test was used to confirm or disprove the research hypotheses. Through the examining of the effect of adaptive sales behavior on customers and impulse buying behaviors, it was found that the direct effect was not significant. Also, the perceived quality of store brands did not have a direct effect on customers' purchases without a plan. The other research results included the significance of the effect of adaptive sales on perceived quality. Another task was the analysis of the effect of customer trust on impulse buying behavior, which was confirmed due to the significance of its path coefficient. The results of indirect relationships also showed that the adaptive sales relationship was significant in relation to the perceived quality through the variable of trust in unplanned purchases. But customer trust waa found not to play a moderating role in the relationship between adaptive seller behavior and unplanned purchases.
According to the results, customer trust plays an effective mediating role in the relationship between research variables to determine the customer's impulse buying due to the adaptive sales behavior of sellers and the perceived quality of customers. However, its moderating effect was not proved. The direct effects of the adaptive sales behavior of sellers and the perceived quality of customers on impulse buying were not significant without considering the role of customer trust.
Conclusion: The results of the research have explicit suggestions and hints for the managers and custodians of in-store shopping centers. The analytical findings of the research refer to the significant regression coefficients of the research model, the importance of the emergence of adaptive sales behavior of sellers in the perceived quality of customers and the role of customer trust with respect to its significant coefficients in direct relationship with impulse buying behavior. In a fitted model, sellers should focus on customer satisfaction by adapting to their tastes, needs, interests and conditions so as to attract customers and build relationship with them in the long run. To achieve the effectiveness of their marketing measures, especially their impact on customer buying behavior in large shopping malls, most marketers can focus on unplanned customer purchases because customers pay more attention to situational factors than to any other situation. Therefore, in this regard, they should improve those factors that are effective in creating and strengthening the effectiveness of unplanned shopping marketing. Sellers can, thus, present their marketing plans to meet the needs and wants of the target market based on appropriate marketing strategies. In order to gain intelligence and increase the ability and readiness to choose an appropriate manner to deal with customers, sellers should oblige themselves to gather the required information about customer characteristics. In this situation, sellers will be more willing to enter into negotiation, and their understanding of customer-oriented sales events will be higher.