Following various precautionary measures as executed by the government to curb the transmission of COVID-19, erratic changes in the form of temporary lockdowns and movement restrictions have created an emergency phenomenon-panic buying. While such consequence has emerged as a timely and relevant topic, reviewed literature indicate an apparent oversight for portraying panic buying through the perspectives of impulsive and compulsive consumptions. Given the gap in the association between panic buying and consumers' emotional aspects within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aspires to develop a contemporary measurement that accurately defines panic buying as a research variable. A combined methodology was hereby adopted, with the employment of qualitative inquiries towards the scale development of panic buying. Following this, quantitative data as collected from a total sample of 600 respondents through an online survey was analysed via both SPSS and AMOS statistical software towards scale assessment and hypothesis testing. Obtained findings uncovered the direct significance of both personal (fear, perceived risk, and perceived scarcity) and social (word-of-mouth and social media) factors on panic buying during the pandemic, whilst having indirect significance on the ensuing post-purchase regret. Impulsivity was further confirmed to exert a substantial moderating impact on the correlation between panic consumption and post-purchase emotional distress. Implications of the study are ultimately discussed.
Shopping cart abandonment remains a challenge for many e-retailers despite the continued growth of the e-commerce industry worldwide. However, the issue of online shopping cart abandonment (OSCA) has not been explored extensively in the literature. Grounded by the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, this study explores a sequential mediation model comprising consumers' wait for lower prices as an antecedent, hesitation at checkout and OSCA as mediators, perceived transaction inconvenience as a moderator, and decision to buy from a land-based retailer (DBLR) as an outcome. An online questionnaire was designed and distributed to 883 online consumers in Mainland China. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyze the survey data. The results show that waiting for lower prices positively influences hesitation at checkout, and subsequently, impacts both OSCA and DBLR. Hesitation at checkout and OSCA play sequential mediating roles in the framework path. In addition, perceived transaction inconvenience strengthens the relationship between waiting for lower prices and hesitation at checkout. Overall, this study contributes to theory and serves as a guideline for e-retailers in reducing the OSCA rate.