Why did I buy this? Purchase regret and repeat purchase intentions: A model and empirical application

• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Author: Muhammad Arslan Sarwar,Zainudin Awang,Muhammad Danish Habib,Jawaria Nasir,Muzzammil Hussain
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2357

ACADEMIC PAPER

Why did I buy this? Purchase regret and repeat purchase

intentions: A model and empirical application

Muhammad Arslan Sarwar

1,2

| Zainudin Awang

1

| Muhammad Danish Habib

3

|

Jawaria Nasir

1

| Muzzammil Hussain

2,4

1

Faculty of Business and Management,

Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Kuala

Terengganu, Malaysia

2

Faculty of Management & Administrative

Sciences, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan

3

Department of Business Administration, Air

University Aerospace and Aviation Campus,

Kamra, Pakistan

4

University of International Business and

Economics, Beijing, China

Correspondence

Muzzammil Hussain, Faculty of

Management & Administrative Sciences,

University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan.

Email: hussain_muzzamil@yahoo.com

This study investigates consumer repurchase behavior and purchases regret in the

context of a Steadily Increasing Discount (SID) strategy. A quantitative research

approach based on a full-scaled administrative survey is adopted in the framework of

the regret theory. Mall intercept technique is used to collect the cross-sectional data

from respondents. To establish the proposed relational paths, structural equation

modeling is applied. The findings of the study suggest that confirmation, price con-

sciousness, and alternative attractiveness have a substantially negative impact on

repurchase intention whereas the positive impact on purchase regret is also evident.

Furthermore, purchase regret harms repurchase intentions. Moreover, the findings

have robust policy implications in the context of corporations offering SID after the

economic crisis in developing countries.

1|INTRODUCTION

The recent competitive environment makes it difficult for brands to

increase market share and retain customers (Bastos & Levy, 2012). As

in the new era of digital-based competition, customers are increas-

ingly buying products relevant to their needs the moment and are not

much loyal to a single brand. Though the importance of loyalty cannot

be overlooked it was also found that the future of marketing for most

of the business will depend upon serving the customers with most rel-

evant needs at the moment than investing more in loyalty programs

(Zealley, Wollan, & Bellin, 2018). The emergence of fast fashion that is

purchasing low priced fashion products which are expected to be rep-

laced with new styles in a shorter time, modify the consumption pat-

terns as now consumers are more demanding and sensitive for new

fashions (Lang & Armstrong, 2018).

Globalization accelerated the rate of fashion consumption and

bring the cost of fashion clothing at a point where it is treated as a

disposal commodity (Bly, Gwozdz, & Reisch, 2015). Now brands are

adopting a “fast fashion”business model by offering trendy styles in

low-quality materials at cheap prices (Diddi, Yan, Bloodhart,

Bajtelsmit, & McShane, 2019). Besides this, brands are offering

Steadily Increasing Discount (SID) as a short-term price discount strat-

egy to increases customer traffic, increase sales (Chung & Li, 2013),

and clear old inventory (Gabler, Landers, & Reynolds, 2017; Gabler &

Reynolds, 2013). The retail strategy of SID has caused a fundamental

change in consumer shopping behavior (Boutsouki, 2019 ). Generally,

the consumer may overpay for the products they are interested rather

miss the opportunity, while applied in the context of SID, price dis-

counts may cause adverse effects like unfavorable perceptions about

quality, the value of the product (Zhang & He, 2020) and feeling of

regret on purchase (Liao, Lin, Luo, & Chea, 2017; Sarwar, Awang, &

Habib, 2019).

It was acknowledged that economic sentiments and financial con-

straints drive consumers the way consumer purchases and justify their

consumptions (Białowolski, 2019; Hamilton, Mittal, Shah, Thomp-

son, & Griskevicius, 2019). Economic crisis has caused a significant

impact on consumption patterns (Victor, Joy Thoppan, Jeyakumar

Nathan, & Farkas Maria, 2018) and drives customers to rethink their

spending priorities. More interestingly in the context of fashion prod-

ucts which is relatively less explored in the domain of consumer

behavior (Kaytaz & Gul, 2014), consumer face conflict between the

desire to adopt rapidly changing fashion trends and cope with the

decrease in purchasing power due to the economic crisis (Ozdamar

Ertekin, Sevil Oflac, & Serbetcioglu, 2020). The current study seeks to

All the authors contributed equally in the study.

Received: 30 June 2020 Revised: 28 July 2020 Accepted: 2 August 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2357

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https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2357