Mindfulness: Helps Curb Impulsive Buying Through Improving Self Control

Abstract

“People spend 46.9% of their waking hours thinking about something else other than what they are doing and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy” (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). An antidote to this mind-wandering is “Mindfulness”; derived from ancient Buddhist tradition it refers to an open and non-judgmental form of awareness that is centered on present moment experiences considering both internal and external environment (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Existing research suggests mindfulness increases self-regulation of attention and self-control (Razza et al., 2015; Panek, Bayer, Cin, & Campbell, 2015). Past research has also suggested mindfulness as a long-term solution to obesity and over-eating (Herpel et al., 2015; Bahl, Milne, Ross, & Chan, 2013). This research suggests mindfulness as a way of improving self-control among consumers and contributes to making a more discerning customer. In my research, I suggest mindfulness as a way to improve self-control and reduce the susceptibility of a consumer to advertising effects, promotion price effects, and impulse buying behavior. We also suggest mindfulness as an intervention to reduce the over-spending problem in consumers. Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM) forms the theoretical basis of our research. ELM suggests two ways of information processing, central route, and peripheral route. In central route processing, customer evaluates communication by the logic of the argument presented. In peripheral processing, customer relies on peripherals like the attractiveness of source of information and other such peripherals to process information (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). The mindful customer is more likely to use central route than the peripheral route of information processing (Schramm & Hu, 2014; Dong & Brunel, 2006; Panek et al., 2015). Due to the difference in information processing, the mindful customer may not be influenced by peripheral cues of marketing like advertising and price promotions. We examine the differential effects of mindfulness vs. non-mindful consumers’ response to marketing messages, through a series of experiments. This research also suggests mindfulness as a way to protect consumers against marketing enticements and improve their self-control against the harmful behavior of impulsive buying and overspending. The research also has implications for improving general happiness in the consumer. Since past research suggests, mind wandering leads to unhappiness in people (Mathew et al., 2010).