To Think , to Feel , to Have : The Effects of Need for Cognition , Hedonism and Materialism on Impulse Buying Tendencies in Adolescents

Samuel Lins, University of Porto, Portugal Ezra Bottequin, University of Geneva, Switzerland Ádám Dóka, University of Budapest (ELTE), Hungary Agata Golasa, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland Frida Hylander, Lund University, Sweden Ana Merchán, University of Almería, Spain Ana Odabašić, University of Belgrade, Serbia Sara Pavlović, University of Zagreb, Croatia Received: 12.05.2013 | Accepted: 13.07.2013

attraction and absorbed towards the promise of instant gratification" (p.306).Impulse buying tendency (IBT) refers to the degree to which an individual is likely to make an impulse purchase of products in general (Jones, Reynolds, Weun, & Beatty, 2003).
It should be noted that impulsive and compulsive buying are terms that have often been used interchangeably (e.g.Dittmar, Beattie, & Friese, 1996), yet they should be distinguished because they differ in their frequency, cause, outcome and severity (Faber, 2010).Nevertheless, impulsive and compulsive buying are related and it is therefore possible to assume that they are affected in similar ways by the same variables.
In the present study, we incorporated the three psychological constructs underlying impulse buying, according to our understanding of Rook and Fisher's (1995) definition, into a model, which are materialism, hedonism and need for cognition (NC).Although Rook and Fisher's definition of impulse buying is one of the most pervasive ones, there is currently no theoretical model that can support it since no research has tested the interplay of materialism, hedonism and NC together on IBT.Our study therefore aims to provide support for Rook and Fisher's (1995) definition of impulse buying by positing a model explaining the impact of materialism, hedonism and NC on IBT in adolescents, a population particularly vulnerable to impulse buying.

To Desire: Materialism
Materialism reflects the relative importance of acquiring and possessing material objects in a person's life.
According to Richins and Dawson (1992), materialism is "the importance ascribed to the ownership and acquisition of material goods in achieving major life goals or desired states" (p.304).Materialism has been shown to be related to compulsive buying with numerous studies reporting a positive association between these two variables (Dittmar, 2005;Rindfleisch, Burroughs, & Denton, 1997).Although most studies in this field investigated the relationship between materialism and compulsive buying, there is also evidence for a positive relationship between materialism and impulse buying.For instance, Troisi, Christopher, and Marek (2006) demonstrated that highly materialistic people had higher IBTs; furthermore, they argued that materialistic people buy possessions because of the positive sensation it provides.Different lines of work posit that materialism is a strategy for alleviating the adverse effects of having unfulfilled psychological needs by enhancing self-esteem (e.g., Dittmar, Beattie, & Friese, 1996).Thus: Hypothesis 1: Materialism should be positively related to IBT.

Emotional Attraction: Hedonic Shopping Motivation
Consumption activities can be motivated by hedonic and/or utilitarian outcomes (Babin, Darden, & Griffin, 1994).Previous research suggests that impulse buying rather involves hedonic motives (Rook, 1987;Silvera, Lavack, & Kropp, 2008).For instance, Herabadi, Verplanken, and van Knippenberg (2009) demonstrated that impulsive purchases were often accompanied by higharousal emotions such as excitement and enthusiasm, and that there was a strong correlation between the occurrence of these emotions and IBT.Činjarević, Tatić, and Petrić (2011) investigated the influence of hedonic shopping motivations on impulse buying behaviour and found a positive effect of adventure and gratification.Thus: Hypothesis 2: Hedonic shopping motivation should be positively related to IBT.
However, an individual's tendency to satisfy his/her hedonic needs through impulse buying does not only result from her drive for positive experiences -evidence indicates that impulse buying is often related to negative emotions (Silvera et al., 2008), and, as a consequence, certain people try to improve their mood through impulse buying, which they consider as a rewarding experience.Verplanken and Sato (2011) argue that impulse buying is a form of self-regulatory behaviour that can either serve as a promotion motive (i.e. to obtain positive outcomes, such as positive emotions) or as a prevention motive (i.e. to avoid negative outcomes, such as low self-esteem).Hausman (2000) developed a hedonic consumption scale comprising the factors of novelty and entertainment, but also emotional lift, thereby adding to the conception that hedonic consumption can serve the purpose of mitigating negative affect or low self-esteem.Based on these observations, it is expected that hedonic shopping motivation represents the mechanism through which materialism (which is associated with low self-esteem) manifests itself and affects IBT.Thus: Hypothesis 3: Materialism is expected to affect IBT through its effect on hedonic shopping motivation (see Figure 1).

Without Reflection: Need for Cognition
Need for cognition is the tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activity (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982).
In research on consumer behaviour, results suggest that high NC individuals develop their attitudes towards products on the basis of elaboration of product attributes, whereas low NC individuals are more susceptible to peripheral cues (Haugtvedt, Petty, & Cacioppo, 1992;Zhang, 1996).For instance, Zhang (1996) showed that low NC individuals were more persuaded by humor in advertisements than by the strength of the argument in the advertisement message.Given that impulsive buying behaviour is characterized by a lack of deliberation and planning (Rook, 1987;Verplanken & Herabadi, 2001), a negative relationship between NC and IBT is expected.To our knowledge, the only study that directly examined the relationship between NC and IBT is that of Verplanken and Herabadi (2001), yet no significant correlation between these authors' IBT scale and NC was found

Adolescents' Vulnerability to IBT
Marketers are increasingly targeting adolescents.
Furthermore, in most countries, adolescents grow up in a culture of consumerism, which makes them more prone to engage in buying behaviour (Bush, Martin, & Bush, 2004).
Shopping has been identified as a daily routine for adolescents (Lin & Chuang, 2005).Adolescents have more spare time and enjoy shopping more than their parents (Taylor & Cosenza, 2002).Also, when they shop, they do so with peers.Luo (2005) has shown that shopping with peers increases impulse purchasing by reducing risk perception and uncertainty (Kiecker & Hartman, 1993), Hedonism Materialis m

Need for Cognition
and by increasing the buyer's confidence that a wise purchase decision was made (Kiecker & Hartman, 1994).
Lin and Chen (2012) examined impulse buying among adolescents and found that high susceptibility to peer influence led to greater impulse buying.

Method Sample
Participants will be adolescents (ages 13-18) recruited from one high school in six European cities: Zagreb (Croatia), Gödöllő (Hungary), Warsaw (Poland), Belgrade (Serbia), Almería (Spain), and Geneva (Switzerland).Each sample will consist of around 200 participants.The research hypotheses will be tested in each sample individually.
The choice of the locations for recruiting the participants was primarily related to the proximity of the respective researchers.No preference was given to which types of high schools were contacted for the study.Several high schools were approached and those that first authorized the data collection were the ones selected.
Given the different regulations for conducting studies in high schools throughout the countries represented in the present research, the specific administrative procedures for obtaining approval from the high schools varied for each country.

Materials
The data for this study will be obtained through a questionnaire combining published scales as well as questions developed specifically for the current study.
Since no versions of the published scales existed in any of the languages spoken by the participants of this study, the scales were translated using the method of back translation (Brislin, 1970).First, the scales were translated into each country's native language (Croatian, Hungarian, French, Polish, Serbian, and Spanish) by the respective bilingual researcher, then they were translated back into English by another person, after which the accuracy of the translation was checked by the researcher.We will use the following scales: Impulse buying tendencies.Participants' IBT will be measured using the scale by Rook and Fisher (1995), a nine-item scale that measures buying impulsiveness with items such as "I often buy things without thinking".
Hedonic Consumption Scale.We will measure hedonic shopping motives with the Hedonic Consumption Scale (Hausman, 2000), a seven-item scale that measures hedonic tendencies in consumers with items such as "I get a real 'high' from shopping".The Hedonic Consumption Scale incorporates the Fun scale developed by Faber and O'Guinn (1988), the Novelty Scale originally developed by Unger (1981) and several items suggested by interview data.
Materialism.The Material Values Scale (Richins, 2004) is an 18-item scale that measures materialism in consumers.An example of an item would be "Some of the most important achievements in life include acquiring material possessions".
Need for cognition.We will use the Need for Cognition Short Form Scale by Cacioppo, Petty, and Kao (1984), an 18-item scale, which uses items such as "I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems".
Each item of these scales can be scored on a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Consumption habit questions.The questionnaire contains a section of 10 questions on participants' consumption habits, for example "When I shop, I shop alone", "Do you go to shopping centers and if so, how often?", or " How much money do you on average have to spend on your own every month (e.g.pocket money, gift money, money from jobs)?".These questions have been developed specifically for our study.

Prospective Discussion
Our prospect is to gather data as scheduled in six

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.A graphical representation of the mediation postulated in Hypothesis 3.
despite their results going in the right direction.Since the authors used a different IBT scale and because their sample size was relatively small, it seems plausible to further explore this relation and thus we postulate: Hypothesis 4: NC should be negatively related to IBT.Furthermore, high NC is expected to attenuate the effect of materialism and hedonism because high NC consumers have an intrinsic motivation to process product information, a process that should interfere with the tendency to impulse buy: Hypothesis 5: NC is expected to moderate the relationship between materialism and IBT.Hypothesis 6: NC is expected to moderate the relationship between hedonic shopping motivation and IBT.
noteworthy to point out that the ethical considerations concerning the research design required us to gain parental approval in several countries, which has prolonged the data collection process.Current Status of the ProjectThus far, ethical approval has been obtained from the University of Zagreb (Croatia), the University of Budapest (Hungary), the University of Warsaw (Poland), the University of Belgrade (Serbia), Lund University (Sweden) and the University of Geneva (Switzerland).Ethical approval for the entire project has been obtained from the University of Porto (Portugal).Before beginning the data collection, a pilot test conducted on ten adolescents from each country was performed in order to ensure the comprehensibility of the translated scales.Currently, data has been collected in Croatia, Hungary and Switzerland.In Serbia and Spain we are in the process of organizing the questionnaire distribution with the chosen high schools.Parental consent is currently being collected in Poland, after which the data will be collected.
countries, thereby enabling us to confirm or reject our hypotheses, which should shed additional light on how hedonism, materialism and need for cognition affect impulse buying tendencies.The cross-cultural data collection in our study opens up the opportunity to obtain a wider perspective on the topic.It is, however, a challenge to conduct research in several languages and settings, which might cause limitations to the validity of the study.Furthermore, differences in sample sizes as well as sociodemographic differences in the samples are also cause for limitations in the current research.Nevertheless, taking all possible limitations into careful consideration, it is our belief that the possibility of comparing the samples from many diverse countries will lead us to a fuller conclusion of the postulated research questions.This manuscript is part of the Work in Progress special edition of JEPS and was developed under a research project of EFPSA's Junior Researcher Programme cohort of 2012-2013.