Impact of Consumer Emotional Intelligence CEI on Impulse Purchase Behavior IPB : A Study Based on Young Consumers of Pakistan

Abstract

The present study attempts to identify the relationship between consumer emotional intelligence and impulse purchase behavior, in both traditional and online context, from the perspective of Pakistani consumer market. It endeavors to investigate the impact of all four dimensions (perceiving ability, facilitating ability, understanding ability and managing ability) of “Ability model” of consumer emotional intelligence (Mayer et al., 1999) individually. A structured questionnaire comprising of consumer emotional intelligence scale, buying impulsive tendency scale, online impulse buying scale and few demographic questions has been distributed among consumers in Pakistan through web survey using convenient sampling technique with an aim to collect 300 responses. The proposed hypotheses have been tested through Cronbach’s alpha analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis. Findings of the current study suggest that there exist weak or moderate and negative relationship among all four dimensions of consumer emotional intelligence and impulse purchase behavior. This study is limited to young consumers of Pakistan only. The study is not industry specific so findings can be generalized to different industries of Pakistan. Not many studies have been conducted to identify the relationship between selected variables. The results of present study would help academicians and practitioners to have a better understanding of the role of emotional intelligence as a significant player when consumers indulge in impulse buying behavior in traditional stores and while shopping online. Keywords: Consumer emotional intelligence, impulse purchase behavior, online impulse purchase behavior, consumer behavior, young consumers.