What Makes Someone Buy Online?

What is the psychology of impulse shopping? Why do people buy online? There are three different forces that must come together for someone to make a purchase: A buyer must have the motivation, have the ability and receive the right trigger to make a purchase.

• Motivation: Motivation stems from the part of the human brain responsible for pleasure, reward and addiction, called the nucleus accumbens (NAc). When it comes to making a purchase, our desire to buy something is formed in the NAc.

• Ability: The ability to buy is related to the financial means of the buyer. Ability is a combination of objective financial means, how much money the buyer has, and their subjective feelings about that objective reality. Does the buyer feel like they can afford it? Both the objective financial reality and the subjective emotional response to the finances are processed in the insula.

• Trigger: The trigger is an outside nudge that pushes the shopper to make the purchase. The two most common triggers in e-commerce are scarcity and urgency. Any trigger that creates a fear of missing out (FOMO) tends to work well with impulse shoppers.

When a buyer is motivated, has the means and comes across a trigger, a sale is made. This is why impulse shopping is an emotional decision, not a rational one. For example, an impulse shopper is more likely to be moved to buy a giant cat pillow over an orthopedic pillow. The giant cat pillow lights up the pleasure center in the NAc. It is a low-ticket item, allowing the insula to give the go-ahead because the buyer has the ability to buy. These two things are brought to the forefront when the online ad mentions the sale of giant cat pillows ends in less than an hour.

Focusing On Motivations

The smartest marketers put much of their focus on creating the right motivations for impulse shoppers. These are not buyers using utilitarian motivations. They are not making impulse buys because they “need” something. They are based on wants or hedonic motivations—things that spark joy and happiness.

The most common hedonic motivations are:

• Fun.

• Excitement.

• Delight.

• Thrilling.

• Enjoyment.

E-commerce businesses that effectively target impulse shoppers with low-ticket items optimized for one of these hedonic motivations, and using effective triggers, are consistently the most profitable companies in the industry.

Who Are Impulse Buyers?

What else do we know about impulse buyers? These are individuals with low levels of impulse control. Statista data from 2018, based on 2,000 respondents, found that 50% of purchases from 18 to 24-year-olds during that time were impulse purchases—much higher than older age brackets. Another survey found that women were more likely to spend on low-ticket item impulse purchases, while men tend to make more high-ticket impulse purchases.

Going back to the psychology of impulse buying, the ideal e-commerce customer is someone seeking excitement or pleasure, has the financial means to buy low-ticket items without research and responds strongly to FOMO.

Once you understand the psychology and the demographics of impulse buyers, creating a profitable e-commerce company is relatively straightforward.

How To Optimize For Impulse Purchases

I believe the most important principle for any e-commerce business is to optimize for impulse buyers. This sounds simple, but most new e-commerce businesses fail because the owners spend too much time and money on product creation and research.

Before you worry about the product, you need to understand the market. Put another way, the who is far more important than the what. Once you understand the people you are selling to, finding the right product is simple. There are tens of thousands of products to choose from. However, if you start with the product, it is much harder to find the perfect market fit.

To optimize for impulse purchases, you must put the buyer first in your marketing. You do not want to have to persuade or educate the majority of your buyers. You want to preach to the choir. You want to sell products that people are already motivated to purchase. Your job is to simply give impulse purchasers the nudge (trigger) they need to do what they already want to do.