Have your cake and eat it too: how invoking post-purchase hyperopia mitigates impulse purchase regret

Abstract

Impulse purchases are encouraged by retailers and can comprise a significant portion of a retailer’s sales. However, both consumers and researchers generally see impulse purchases as something to be avoided because they tend to be incongruent with consumers’ long-term goals. Using a goal congruence framework, this research finds that taking a broader temporal perspective of a virtuous choice made some time ago (i.e., a distant-past hyperopic choice) is one way for consumers to reduce the regret associated with an impulse purchase. Specifically, recalling a distant-past virtuous choice provides justification for a recent impulse purchase, reducing goal incongruity and thereby reducing associated regret. This effect allows retailers to both encourage impulse purchases and mitigate their potential negative consequences.