Abstract:
Online impulse buying behavior is one of the major phenomena in the fast-emerging e-commerce industry in
Sri Lanka and especially in the fashion industry. The factors that lead to online impulse buying in the Western
Province, Sri Lanka were explored in this research, pertaining to internal, external, situational an sociocultural
factors. The study fills this research gap of local empirical research on this issue and comes up with findings
applicable to the Sri Lankan context. It took a quantitative, cross sectional approach, survey design with a
conveniently selected sample of 384 online fashion consumers, aged 18 to 60 years in the urban area within the
Western Province. The structured questionnaire with 5-point Likert scale was employed to collect the data, and
the analysis of such data in terms of descriptive and inferential statistics, correlation, and regression analysis
was performed with the help of IBM SPSS 24.0. Pilot survey was conducted to test the questionnaire and the
Cronbach’s alpha values of all variable were greater than 0.7, ensured the internal consistency of variables. The
result proves that the four variables; external (e.g., sales promotions, quality of the websites), internal (e.g.,
emotional states, hedonic motivation), situational (e.g., availability of time and money), as well as sociocultural
(e.g., peer influence, social acceptance) are significantly and positively associated with online impulse buying
behavior. It is peculiar to note that external influences including lower cost and promotion by celebrities as well
as internal factors including dispositions in the mood and the need to relax have been very high predictors.
These findings provide a good implication to retailers and marketers in the fashion industry in Sri Lank.
