The gap between generations in impulse buying behavior for the context of social commerce

Introduction: The expansion of social commerce with the rise of social media and its mass adoption has acted as a positive catalyst for impulse buying. Social media helps build positive branding and support impulse buying. The review of the research literature shows that in previous research on the determinants of impulse purchases, not much attention has been paid to the effect of the generation gap on impulse buying behavior. Cultural transformation is gradual and it is a reflection of transformation in constructive experiences that have been formed in different generations. With the succession of newer generations, the worldview, desires, needs and behaviors of the audience have changed in different generations. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the differences in attitudes of different generations, which are the basis of their different buying behaviors, and to form marketing activities according to them. Therefore, although nearly three decades have passed since the concept of impulse buying and the activity of researchers in this field have passed, and the research literature in this field has been enriched enough for a systematic review, but few researchers have reviewed the existing literature in this field have conducted impulse buying in the context of social commerce, and a few recent studies have tried to describe the current and future status of research on impulse buying behavior, focusing on the theoretical foundations and factors affecting impulse buying. So far, bibliographic research has not been done in Iran in order to comprehensively investigate this concept and the trend of global research in this field, and there is a research gap in this field. According to what was said, there are two main goals in this research. As the first goal, an attempt is made to identify and cluster the antecedents of impulse buying behavior in the context of social commerce by conducting a bibliometric analysis based on published scientific products, and the second goal is to bridge the gap between the two generations of Z and Y to be investigated in the antecedents of impulse buying behavior in the context of social commerce.
Methodology: The current research was carried out with a multi-method approach and using bibliometric analysis and online survey. At first, according to the bibliometric analysis method, the publishing process of all scientific products indexed in the Scopus database from 1979 to 2022 in the field of impulse buying and social commerce was investigated, and the main subject clusters were identified as the antecedents of impulse buying behavior in the context of social commerce. Then, in order to conduct an online survey, the data obtained from 384 users of the Instagram page in the field of fashion, who were selected by available sampling method, were used. In order to measure the investigated components, standard questionnaires were used. The validity of this phase was checked through face and content validity, and the face and content validity of all questionnaires were confirmed by experts. In this phase, in order to analyze the data and to investigate the intergenerational gap in impulse buying behavior in the context of social commerce, an independent t-test has been used and to compare the average of all antecedents and impulse buying behavior in the context of social commerce between two generations Z and Y have been discussed. In this research, the PLS-MGA method was used to run the model in two Z and Y generations and to check the difference between the two groups.
Discussion and Results: Based on the results of the first study, only one article was published in 1979 in the field of "impulsive buying behavior" until the year 2000, when this topic has been gradually noticed by researchers, and the trend of publishing articles from 2011 to 2014 is an upward trend and then until In 2021, there was a downward trend and in 2022, there was an increasing trend again. Also, based on the analysis of the keywords of the reviewed articles, four main topic clusters were identified as the antecedents of impulse buying behavior, including social related features and para-social interaction, acceptance of social commerce and social capital. The results of the second study showed that there is a significant difference between all the antecedents and the level of impulse buying behavior in the context of social commerce between the two generations Z and Y, which indicates the existence of an intergenerational gap in the behavior of impulse buying in the context of social commerce. In general, the members of Generation Z are more involved in impulse buying behavior in the context of social commerce. Also, the results obtained from the PLS-MGA method showed that the difference in the impact of all the investigated antecedents on the impulse buying behavior in the context of social commerce between the two generations Z and Y is significant.
Conclusion: Marketing managers can create a culture to increase the desirability of instant purchases among the adult generation; establishing stable and transparent communication with the adult generation customers in order to increase their level of confidence and trust in impulse buying in social networks; Providing appropriate advertisements and trying to form a positive attitude towards impulse buying in audiences of different generations; identifying, understanding the style and way of life of customers from different generations in the target market; awareness of the interests and motivations of audiences of different generations; designing and creating advertisements according to the needs and demands of customers from different social classes and generations and choosing an appropriate advertising method that is compatible with the mentality of the audience.