How social media promotes impulsive buying: examining the role of customer inspiration

Purpose This research examines the underlying psychological process of customers' impulsive buying on social media through the lens of customer inspiration. Drawing on the customer inspiration theory, it identifies the factors influencing customer inspiration on social media from three perspectives: source characteristics, platform characteristics and personal characteristics, which subsequently lead to impulsive buying. Since the conceptualization of source credibility includes three mostly reported components: attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness, it further contrasts the effects of three dimensions of source credibility on customer inspiration. Design/methodology/approach A structural equation model of customers' impulsive buying on social media was developed through the lens of customer inspiration. An online survey with 625 participants was conducted to test the hypotheses, and the partial least squares (PLS3) method was used. Findings This research found that source credibility, social presence and customer innovativeness are antecedents of customer inspiration on social media, which positively influence the inspired-by state of the customers, which impacts the inspired-to state and further leads to impulsive buying. By comparing the three dimensions of source credibility, the authors found that attractiveness and expertise positively affect the inspired-by state, while trustworthiness has no significant effect. Originality/value This research establishes the link between impulsive buying and customer inspiration, which provides a new psychological perspective to understand impulsive buying. In addition, it investigates the source characteristics of customer inspiration by comparing the effect of three dimensions of source credibility on customer inspiration, which provides the first evidence for connecting customer inspiration and source credibility.