Literature Review

Jasmine’s Articles

In Impulse Buying: Design Practices and Consumer Needs (found by Jasmine), Moser et al. investigate how online shopping website design influences impulse spending and what consumers need to better regulate these behaviors in two complementary studies. In the first study, Moser et al. analyze 200 online shopping websites to identify common design patterns that encourage impulse purchases. The study found that many sites intentionally reduce the perceived risk of buying (e.g. free reuters), leverage social influence (e.g., ratings and reviews), and increase the proximity to the product to accelerate purchase decisions. Notably, the most prevalent impulse-inducing features (present on 75% of the websites analyzed) include member rewards and discounts, discounted pricing, product ratings and reviews, sale pages, interactive product visuals (e.g., photo zoom and spin), and return and refund policies.

In the second study, the authors shift perspectives by surveying online impulse buyers to understand what features and tools might help reduce impulse spending. In contrast to the retailer-driven designs identified in  the first study, participants expressed a desire for self-control tools. These included features that encourage reflection, impose spending limits, increase checkout effort, and enforce a delay before purchase. To encourage deliberation, for example, participants suggested reflective prompts such as “What will you use it for?” and “Do I actually need this right now?” as mechanisms to slow down decision-making and promote reflection.

Together, these studies directly inform the design of our product because they highlight a clear tension between retailer incentives to encourage impulse spending and user desires for greater control and intentionality.

In Inculcating a Behaviour Change Among Impulsive Online Shoppers: Adapting to Mindful Spending Habits (found by Jasmine), Jafri et al. study individuals who have recently become partially or fully financially independent to understand what triggers impulsive spending online. The study finds that mindless scrolling driven by boredom, along with discount notifications and promotional alerts, and negative moods, frequently leads users to make unplanned purchases for items they do not need. Based on these findings, the researchers explore several design interventions aimed at encouraging behavioral change among impulsive shoppers. These interventions include a budgeting app, RFID tags on users’ clothes to track what they already own, carbon conscious shopping, and a gamified approach to learning about budgeting and spending. After testing low- and medium-fidelity prototypes, they converge on “DigiSave”, a mobile app that allows users to set budgets and receive notifications when the spending limits are exceeded. This study informs our work by demonstrating how insights about spending triggers can be translated into tested design solutions, helping us build on existing research rather than reinventing prior approaches.

Elijah’s Articles

In The Habitual Consumer, Wood and Neal define habits as automatic responses triggered by environmental contexts rather than current goals. They illustrate this with a study showing that habitual popcorn eaters consumed stale popcorn just as much as fresh popcorn because the cinema context triggered the eating behavior regardless of the food quality. The authors report that everyday demands like time pressure and distraction increase reliance on habits because consumers lack the cognitive resources to make deliberate choices.

Under such pressure, consumers often ignore new information and instead seek data that supports their established behaviors. This directly informs our product design by highlighting that informational tools are often insufficient to stop habitual spending since habits persist even when intentions change. Because habits are best broken by changing environmental cues, we should focus on context disruption within the interface to break the automatic cue response loop rather than relying solely on user willpower.

In What Do We Spend Our Money for? , Edward L. Thorndike investigates the psychological motivations behind consumer spending to determine which human wants are gratified by financial expenditures. Using juries of experts to analyze spending data, Thorndike finds that less than a third of total expenditures are for physical survival. Instead, the majority of spending is driven by social and psychological needs, such as the desire for approval and self-respect, which often dictates spending on items like clothing far more than utility does.

This perspective informs our work by highlighting that impulse buying is rarely about the material product itself. If users spend money to acquire social approval or self-esteem, a simple budgeting tool will fail to address the root cause. To effectively regulate spending, our design should encourage users to identify the emotional need behind a purchase, forcing a moment of reflection on whether the item actually fulfills that desire.

Cyan’s Articles

Peet & Davydenko (2021)’s Financial self-control strategy use: Generating personal strategies reduces spending more than learning expert strategies reported on three experimental studies investigating the effectiveness of self-control strategies on everyday spending. Study 1 (n = 280) was a month-long study where participants reported their spending goals at the beginning of the month and actual spending at the end of the month. Results demonstrated that participants who used their own self-control strategies had more reduced spending than participants who used strategies from an expert or from a lay individual. Study 2 (n = 246) conceptually replicated Study 1, and found that participants who generated their own financial strategies had lower monthly spending than a control group who did not read or describe financial control strategies. Study 3 (n = 339) explored why personalized strategies were more effective, and found that such strategies were more in line with participants’ personalities. Altogether, the findings from this article can inform our work by demonstrating the benefits of allowing users to have some degree of autonomy over their plans for spending. 

Davydenko & Peetz (2024)’s Does Timing of Self-Control Strategies Matter? How Focusing on Proactive versus Reactive Strategies Affects Monthly Spending examined whether self-control strategies for spending were more effective before or during a spending scenario. Participants (n = 119) set a monthly spending goal and were assigned to one of three self-control strategy conditions: (1) a proactive condition where participants received self-control strategies before tempting situations, (2) a reactive condition where participants received self-control strategies during tempting situations, and (3) a control condition where participants did not receive self-control strategies. Findings demonstrated that participants in the proactive condition participants spent less than planned whereas reactive condition participants spent more than planned. At the same time, participants who proactively received self-control did not spend less on average than those in the control condition. These findings provides valuable insight for helping inform at what stage of the financial spending process our intervention should occur.

Bennie’s Articles

In FOMO and the Impulsive Purchasing Behavior of Young People, the main study examines how fear of missing out (FOMO) drives impulse purchases among young Vietnamese consumers on livestream platforms like TikTok and Facebook. Using the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, the researchers surveyed 236 university students about their livestream shopping habits and analyzed the data using PLS-SEM modeling. Key findings show that FOMO directly impacts impulse buying during livestreams. Also, three main factors intensify FOMO: 

1. livestreamer attractiveness – charismatic hosts create stronger emotional connections with viewers
2. information quality – comprehensive product details increase trust and urgency
3. interactivity – real-time engagement creates fear of missing out on conversations or limited-time offers.

Most participants (67.4%) made 1-2 purchases per month via livestream, and the study suggests sellers can strategically leverage FOMO through engaging streamers, detailed information, and interactive experiences, though this raises ethical concerns about exploiting psychological vulnerabilities.

Factors Affecting Impulse Buying Behavior of Consumers by Rodrigues, Lopes, and Varela synthesizes research on impulse buying, examining the psychological, environmental, and technological factors driving unplanned purchases. The authors distinguish impulse buying from general unplanned purchasing and frame it as stemming from sudden emotional desires coupled with low cognitive control. The synthesis reveals that physical stores trigger more impulse buying than online shopping (40% vs. 25% of consumers spend more than planned) because they engage all five senses, while online delivery delays create cooling-off periods. The authors also find that people with lower self-esteem and higher anxiety are more prone to impulsive purchasing. Additionally, the paper notes that sensory and psychological factors related to products often outweigh the physical environment’s importance. Finally, an observation is made that the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have shifted consumers toward more planned consumption, though long-term persistence of these changes remains uncertain.