Impulse Buying: Design Practices and Consumer Needs

E-commerce sites have an incentive to encourage impulse buying, even when not in the consumer's best interest. This study investigates what features e-commerce sites use to encourage impulse buying and what tools consumers desire to curb their online spending. We present two studies: (1) a systematic content analysis of 200 top e-commerce websites in the U.S. and (2) a survey of online impulse buyers (N=151). From Study 1, we find that e-commerce sites contain multiple features that encourage impulsive buying, including those that lower perceived risks, leverage social influence, and enhance perceived proximity to the product. Conversely, from Study 2 we find that online impulse buyers want tools that (a) encourage deliberation and avoidance, (b) enforce spending limits and postponement, (c) increase checkout effort, (d) make costs more salient, and (e) reduce product desire. These findings inform the design of "friction'' technologies that help users make more deliberative consumer choices.