Exploring Consumers’ Impulse Buying Behavior

on Social Commerce Platforms: The Role

of Fear of Missing Out (A Study on Tiktok
Livestream-Selling)

Mentari Septynaputri Widodo(B)

Politeknik Ubaya, Surabaya, Indonesia

[email protected]

Abstract. Live streaming is becoming popular, and many social media vendors
have adopted live streaming platforms. Live streaming has led to improve sales
performance. In Indonesia, the live stream-selling market in Indonesia or selling
via live streaming is growing. Some of them are on the video platform and Tik-
Tok social media. Live streaming shopping allows streamers (online sellers) to
show the product in live video and show the product’s detail. This makes online
channels, including e-commerce and live streaming selling, influence people to
behave impulsively. This study aims to examine the influence of sales promotion
and FOMO on impulse buying and how impulse buying behavior affects post-
purchase dissonance, a study on TikTok live stream-shopping. This study focuses
on five variables: Fear of missing out (FOMO), sales promotion, impulse buying,
product dissonance, and emotional dissonance. Based on previous research, Fear
of missing out and sales promotion influenced impulse buying behavior. While,
impulse buying influences someone’s purchase dissonance. The researcher sur-
veyed 115 Indonesian millennial as respondents. The results show that Fear of
missing out and sales promotion positively influence impulse buying, and impulse
buying positively influences product and emotional dissonance.

Keywords: Fear of Missing Out · Impulse Buying · Post Purchase Dissonance

1 Introduction
Live streaming is becoming popular, and many social media vendors have adopted live
streaming platforms. Live streaming has improved sales performance (Sun et al., 2019).
Live streaming services globally have grown by 266% over the past three years. This
fact is supported by data from Vimeo Livestream, which states that 80% of consumers
prefer watching live videos to reading a blog review [1]. In Indonesia, the number of
livestream-selling markets or selling via live stream broadcasts is growing. Some of
them are on the video platform as well as TikTok social media [2].
TikTok is a digital platform that provides live-streaming sales features. Through the
TikTok Shopping feature, sellers can directly display exciting and interactive content,

© The Author(s) 2024

W. R. Murhadi et al. (Eds.): INSYMA 2023, AEBMR 256, pp. 377–384, 2024.
https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-244-6_56
378 M. S. Widodo

such as product reviews, unboxing, and informing ongoing product discount promos.
Sellers can also interact and answer questions from followers directly. This way, the
interaction between sellers and potential buyers feels closer [3].
Live streaming shopping allows streamers (online sellers) to show the products’ detail
in a live video [4]. The consumer can also ask questions directly to the streamers (online
sellers), and the sellers can directly answer questions in real time. This feature can provide
highly personalized service, significantly impacting customer buying behavior [5]. Live
streaming, as a new phenomenon, has not received enough attention in the research
world. Nevertheless, despite the growing popularity of live-streaming shopping, only a
few research has investigated how customer purchases are affected by live-streaming.
Moreover, social commerce (live stream-selling) can empower consumers to control
their behavior, and social media users state that social commerce also influences their
shopping processes and inspire their online purchases, which could lead them to have
online impulsive behavior [6]. This makes online channels, including e-commerce and
live stream- selling, influence people to behave impulsively.
Several factors lead people to behave impulsively. The first is the Fear of Missing
Out [7]. Consumers with a high level of FOMO tend to stay up to date with the newest
trend and do not want to get left behind. Due to this fear, they tend to make impulse
purchases to follow the current trend [8]. Someone with a high level of FOMO tends to
keep in touch with other people intensely, leading to impulse purchase behavior.
Besides FOMO, Sales Promotion is another factor that could stimulate consumers’
impulse behavior. Sales promotions such as free postage, discounts, buy one get one, etc.
could influence consumers’ impulsive buying behavior [9]. Sales promotion can attract
and retain consumers because it provides benefits for them [10].
Consumers may experience post-purchase dissonance after they make an online
impulse purchase because their expectations of the product are not the same as their post-
purchase cognitions. There are two types of post-purchase dissonance that consumers
may experience: product dissonance and emotional dissonance. Product dissonance is
consumer doubts regarding the product, whether they need it after making a purchase
and whether it is the right choice. Emotional dissonance refers to whether consumers
regret buying a product or have other negative feelings, such as pain or disappointment in
making decisions. Businesses that want to capitalize on these fears and worries are likely
to do so by triggering consumer impulse buying behavior. Considering all of the above,
this study aims to examine the influence of Fear of Missing Out and sales promotion on
impulse buying and how impulse buying affects post-purchase dissonance.

1.1 Fear of Missing Out

FOMO is identified as an emotion, especially a mental state and emotional change, that
can result in excessive use of social media, resulting in a chain effect of buying behavior
[11]. FOMO drives a person to deal with the behavior of others and engage in destructive
behavior out of a need to be constantly told about the experiences that others have and
a desire to follow suit [12].
 Exploring Consumers’ Impulse Buying Behavior 379

1.2 Sales Promotion

Sales promotion is a situational factor that could stimulate someone’s impulsive buying
behavior [13]. Marketers try to attract consumers using various sales and promotional
tactics such as offering discounts, membership cards, free postage coupons, buy-one-get-
one promotions, and others [14]. For the operational definition of this sales promotion
variable, this study defines sales promotion as offering incentives to consumers to pay
for products in the form of discounts or vouchers.

1.3 Impulse Buying

Impulse buying is defined as impulsive and reckless behavior and self-reaction, signify-
ing that consumers experience sudden stimuli that induce impulses of inner happiness
and pleasure and adopt a sub-order of impulsive behavior and reckless buying behavior
[15]. Consumer impulsive buying behavior is not a planned buying activity, but an imme-
diate purchase of certain commodities without careful consideration of the consequences
[16].
Someone with a high level of FOMO will try to stay up to date with a current con-
dition. The higher a person’s FOMO level, the more afraid existing trends or conditions
will leave them behind. When a person’s fear of missing the trend is high, he will tend to
make unplanned purchases because of the fear of being left behind. Therefore, the higher
a person’s FOMO level, the higher the likelihood he will make an impulse purchase.
When the sales promotion offered is attractive enough, the possibility for people to
purchase at that time will also be higher because they will be afraid to lose the sales
promotion offered. According to Kamalia et.al. [9], more impulsive buying behavior
occurs with increased sales promotions. Based on several previous studies, it has been
revealed that sales promotion will positively increase one’s purchase urge [14]. Based
on this description, the first and second hypotheses are proposed as follows.

H1: FOMO positively affects impulse buying.

H2: Sales promotion positively affects impulse buying.

1.4 Product Dissonance and Emotional Dissonance

Product dissonance is consumer doubts regarding the product, whether they need it, and
whether it is the right choice after making a purchase. Emotional dissonance refers to
whether consumers regret buying a product or have other negative feelings, such as pain
or disappointment in making decisions. When someone makes an unplanned impulse
purchase, they will tend to make a purchase not driven by a need but driven by other
factors. So doubts about product needs will be higher. In addition, when buying a product
spontaneously, the possibility for someone to feel sorry for the purchase will be higher
because the purchase is not based on needs.
Therefore, the third and fourth hypotheses are stated as follows.

H3: Impulse buying positively affects product dissonance.

H4: Impulse buying positively affects emotional dissonance.
380 M. S. Widodo

2 Research Methods

This research was conducted using a survey by distributing questionnaires to respon-

dents. The data collection technique used was non-probability sampling by determining
the sample, namely purposive sampling. Purposive sampling is a sampling technique
with conditions that meet specific criteria. Respondent requirements for this research
are: TikTok users, millennial aged at least 17 years old, have seen TikTok live in the past
six months, and ever made a purchase on TikTok live in the past six months.
This study has exogenous and endogenous. The exogenous variables are fear of
missing out (FOMO) and sales promotion. The endogenous variables are impulse buying,
product dissonance, and emotional dissonance. This study used a questionnaire as a data
collection technique, using a 5-point Likert Scale with 1 is strongly disagree to 5 is
strongly agree. The operational definition of the variable was adapted and modified
from previous research.
Of the scales employed for this study, the FOMO scale consisting of five indicators
was adapted and modified from Kim et.al. [17], Celik et.al. [7], and Widyastuti [11]. The
sales promotion scale composed of two indicators was adapted from Prasetio & Muchnita
[18] study. The impulse buying scale, composed of four indicators, was adapted from
Celik et.al. [7]. Product dissonance consists of two statements, and emotional dissonance
consists of three statements, adapted from Celik et.al. [7].
The number of respondents in this research was 115 respondents. The data were
analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique. SEM analysis tech-
niques were carried out using the AMOS 22 software. SEM was chosen because it
has many advantages compared to ordinary multivariate analysis techniques, enabling
researchers to simultaneously test and estimate the relationship between the independent
and dependent variables with many indicators. SEM also has many advantages compared
to ordinary multivariate analysis techniques, enabling researchers to simultaneously test
and estimate the relationship between the independent and dependent variables with
many indicators [19].
The SEM analysis technique will test the research model designed with several
validity and reliability tests so that it is expected to be able to produce conclusions and
answer the previously formulated problems.

3 Results and Discussion

Table 1 shows the results of validity and reliability testing. The Goodness of Fit (GOF)
value in the measurement model shows good criteria (GF1 = 0.9; RMSEA = 0.066;
TLI = 0.962; NFI = 0.927).
Measurement items used in variables must meet the requirements of validity and
reliability [19]. The validity test consists of a convergent validity test and a discriminant
validity test. A convergent validity test is carried out to test whether the indicator has a
high proportion of variance by assessing the loading factor, which reflects the relationship
between each statement item and latent variables. It meets the criteria if “loading factor”
or “standardized loading estimate” > 0.50. Discriminant validity tests are carried out to
test whether the two or more constructs being tested were independent (free) constructs.
 Exploring Consumers’ Impulse Buying Behavior 381

According to Hair [20], reliability is the extent to which a set of variables or vari-
ables is consistent and related to size consistency. So the reliability test was carried out
to determine the extent to which an instrument in a study can be trusted. Measuring
reliability for SEM can be carried out using a composite/construct reliability measure
(a measure of composite/construct reliability - CR) or a variance extracted measure (a
measure of variant extracts - AVE). The variance extract reflects the total variance in the
indicator described by the latent construct. Construct reliability is said to be good if the
value of construct reliability is > 0.70 and the average variance extracted (AVE) value
of at least 0.5.
Table 1 shows that the results of testing the variable measurement items show valid
and reliable results. This is indicated by the AVE value, loading, and reliability standards
that have met the requirements of good validity and reliability.
Referring to the structural model hypothesis testing shown in Fig. 1 and Table 2, all
hypotheses proposed are supported.

Table 1. Validity and Reliability tests of the CFA Model

Variables Std. Loading (λ) AVE CR

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
FOMO1 0.544 0.558 0.861
FOMO3 0.722
FOMO4 0.827
FOMO5 0.830
FOMO6 0.777
Sales Promotion (SP)
SP4 0.934 0.789 0.882
SP5 0.841
Impulse Buying
IB2 0.757 0,726 0.913
IB3 0.940
IB4 0.841
IB5 0.861
Product Dissonance (PD)
PD1 0.716 0.556 0,714
PD3 0.775
Emotional Dissonance (ED)
ED1 0.930 0.711 0.879
ED2 0.868
ED3 0.719
382 M. S. Widodo

Fig. 1. Structural Model Results **p ≤ 0.05, ***p ≤ 0.001. The figure shows the standardized
estimate value.

Table 2. The Results of the Hypothesis Testing

Variable’s path Std. Estimate Critical ratio p Remarks

(β) (C.R.)
FOMO → IB 0.641 8.231 *** supported
SP → IB 0.256 3.870 *** supported
IB → PD 0.844 5.942 *** supported
IB → ED 0.749 6.674 *** supported
FOMO = Fear of Missing Out; SP = Sales Promotion; I B = Impulse Buying; PD = Product
Dissonance; ED = Emotional Dissonance*** p ≤ 0.001

As shown in Table 2 and Fig. 1, Fear of missing out significantly affects impulse
buying; thus, H1 is supported (β = 0.641, p ≤ 0.001). Sales promotion significantly
affects impulse buying (β = 0.256, p ≤ 0.001) thus, H2 is supported.
Impulse buying significantly affects product dissonance (β = 0.844, p ≤ 0.001), and
emotional dissonance (β = 0.749, p ≤ 0.001), indicating that empirical data support H5.

4 Conclusion

This study aims to examine the influence of sales promotion and FOMO on impulse
purchases and how impulse purchases affect post-purchase dissonance study on TikTok
live stream-shopping. FOMO and sales promotion positively influence impulse buy-
ing. Impulse buying behavior positively influences product dissonance and emotional
dissonance.
The recommendations that can be put forward based on the findings of this study
include: For further research, it is possible to conduct a moderation test for gender
because several studies explain that men and women have different emotional levels.
Thus, the perceived level of post-purchase dissonance may also differ between men and
 Exploring Consumers’ Impulse Buying Behavior 383

women. FOMO will affect individual behavior, including what products they will buy.
FOMO is more common among people who frequently use social media, so marketers
can use it by stimulating FOMO in their social media campaigns [7].

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