Wait, Let’s Think about Your Purchase Again: A Study on Interventions for Supporting Self-Controlled Online Purchases

Abstract

As online marketplaces adopt new technologies (e.g., one-click purchase) to encourage consumers’ purchases, the number of consumers who impulsively buy products also increases. Although many interventions have been introduced for consumers’ self-controlled purchases, there have been few studies that evaluate the effectiveness of the techniques in the real environment. In this paper, we first conduct an online survey with 118 consumers in their 20s to investigate their impulse buying behaviors and self-control strategies. Based on the survey results and literature surveys, we develop interventions that can assist consumers’ self-controlled online purchases, including Reflection, Distraction, Desire Reduction, and Salient Cost. For evaluation, we have a user study with 107 participants in the real world e-commerce site. The results indicate that all interventions are effective in reducing impulse buying urge, while it raises the variations in user experiences. Lastly, we discuss our findings and design implications.