Compulsive Buying in Online Daily Deal Settings: An Investigation of Motivations and Contextual Elements

The authors develop a motivation theory of online buyer behavior for daily deal promotions with a focus on compulsive buyers. The theory helps explain and predict compulsive buyers' online or mobile shopping motivations. Further, the theory explains mobile/online buyer's psychological responses to contextual factors in online daily deal promotions. Daily deal promotions display indicators that may increase time pressure (e.g., product is available for today only claims) and social pressure (e.g., 834 other consumers have purchased claims). The authors empirically show that daily deal websites represent an especially tempting shopping context for compulsive buyers due to hedonic and social motives that influence consumers' response to such contextual factors. To protect this vulnerable consumer segment from overspending, the implications for retailers and daily deal site managers are to lessen the prominence of high-pressure indicators, such as number of deals sold to other consumers and the seconds remaining to purchase.