Unplanned purchasing is not necessarily impulse buying, the letter referring to a tendency to buy on whim. For example a parent may reminded that there is no breakfast cereal in the house by seeing the product on the supermarket shelf. The decision to buy is made in the store. The parents decide to examine nutritional information on various packages and carefully select a cereal judged to be most nutritious. This is an unplanned purchase, not an impulse purchase. The package, not the advertising, becomes the primary means of communicating the product benefits. In store stimuli outweigh the influence of out of store communications in this decisions.
An impulse buying decision might be defined as a decision in which the bit of information processed and do is the time taken relative to the normal decisional time lapse are significantly less with respect to the same or quite similar products or services. Impulse buying can be distinguished from other types of consumer buying behaviour rapid or impulsiveness with which the consumer moves through the decisional period.
According to stern 1962 there are four types of unplanned purchases:
1. Pure impulse for variety or novelty. This type of behaviour represents a departure from the normal set of products or brands purchased.
2. Reminder effect because the item is needed, but was not included in shopping intentions prior entering the store. In other words the remainder effect takes place when a shopper's is an item and robbers that the stock at home is exhausted or low or recalls and advertisement or other information about the item. The key factor is, remembered prior experience with the product or knowledge of it.
3. Suggestion effect for a new product based on install stimuli. Suggestion effect takes place where a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualise a need for it, even though he has no previous knowledge of the item. Product quality, functions, and the like most be evaluated at the point of sale.
4. Planned mpluse refers to a consumers intention to go to a specific store because of a sale, but with no plan to buy a particular product.
