Source: CreditCards.com
Notes: Youth (18-29) are the most likely to have made an impulse purchase, per the CreditCards.com survey, with 88% claiming to have done so. Among the 3 in 4 respondents who have made an impulse purchase, 50% of females and 47% of males report having made such a purchase because they were excited, with boredom (32% and 28%, respectively) another key state of mind. Among impulsive shoppers, men were almost 3 times as likely as women (13% vs. 5%) to have made an impulse buy due to being intoxicated. Separately, the study notes that men tend to splurge more on their impulse buys than women.
Related: Consumers Say Discounts Bring Them Back In-Store, Drive Impulse Purchases
About the Data: Impulse purchases are defined as “unplanned or unnecessary decisions to buy a product just before the purchase was made.”
The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for CreditCards.com from Nov. 6-9. It contacted a random sample of 1,000 adults living in the continental United States. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline (500) and cellphone (500, including 290 without a landline phone). Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. The margin of sampling error for the complete set of weighted data is ± 3.5 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for those who reported impulsive purchases is ± 4.0 percentage points.