IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ON IMPULSIVE PURCHASING BEHAVIOR: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON THE ONLINE FASHION RETAIL INDUSTRY IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

This study was performed to discover the impact of social media marketing on Sri Lankan online fashion retail customers' impulsive purchasing behaviour. By conducting the research, the researchers chose to test five influencing factors of social media marketing, namely: hedonic motivation, website quality, trust, situational factor, and variety seeking. The study is descriptive in nature, and a survey was carried out to test the impact. The research was single cross-sectional as data was collected from the sample at a single point time. The unit of analysis was online fashion retailing consumers. A convenient sampling method was used to select the sample, and an online questionnaire was distributed among the online fashion retail customers and observed 384 responses. One of the most significant findings of this study was situational factors and variety-seeking, which made a notable impact on the impulsive purchasing behavior of online fashion retail customers in Sri Lanka. Moreover, hedonic motivation was also identified to be positively impacting the impulsive purchasing behaviour of the customer. This paper provides a rich and vivid understanding of social media marketing methods and impulsive buying behaviour, which may benefit entrepreneurs, marketers, and academics. The study recommends marketers and brand managers of the online fashion retail industry in Sri Lanka create social media marketing strategies targeting impulsive purchasing behaviour and create customer engagement programmes through social media to allow customers to create conversation amongst themselves, which will influence customers to socialize purchase impulsively.