The influence of hedonic shopping motivation on online impulse buying behavior in the fashion industry

Impulse buying is a key marketing strategy to boost online sales in fast fashion, as many items in this sector are purchased impulsively, often driven by hedonic motivations. The study aims to determine the influence of hedonic shopping motivation on online impulse purchase behavior in the fashion industry among Generation Y consumers. Generation Y consumers are tech-savvy customers with high-income potential who engage in online shopping. Following a cross-sectional survey, 400 responses from Generation Y students were collected from North-West University and Vall University of Technology in South Africa and analyzed to address the research objective. The results of the study indicate that Generation Y students found social shopping, value shopping, relaxation shopping and novelty as the strongest motives that influence their fast fashion online impulse buying behavior, while idea shopping, adventure shopping and fun with praise from others do not exhibit a statistically significant influence on this cohort. In terms of importance, relaxation shopping was the most important motive for fast fashion online impulse buying behavior among Generation Y students, followed by social shopping, novelty and value shopping. The present study obtained a coefficient of determination (R-squared) of 0.492, suggesting that roughly 49.2% of the variance in Generation Y students’ online impulse buying behavior to purchase fast fashion can be predicted by relaxation shopping, social shopping, novelty and value shopping.