She was a great help in guiding us and solving the majority of the problems we encountered during this research. Furthermore, we would like to convey our thanks to our parents for their unwavering support during the execution of our final year project. This attached research paper entitled "The relationship between online impulse buying behavior, materialism and subjective well-being (SWB) among Malaysian young adults" prepared and submitted by Foong Kai Jie, Chong Ka Yee and Lee Shun Yi in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor Social Sciences (Hons) Psychology is hereby accepted.
Purchasing and procurement of materials are becoming the current norm associated with one's subjective well-being (SWB). Many, especially young adults, use the internet to make impulse purchases until they lose themselves and even go bankrupt while pursuing high levels of life fulfillment and happiness. This sparked curiosity to see if there was a relationship between online impulsive buying, success materialism, happiness materialism and SWB among Malaysian young adults.
The findings of this study add additional support to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and are considered an extension of the literature review. In addition, the findings may raise awareness for government agencies, policy makers and counselors to develop strategies to reduce happiness materialism and increase SWB among Malaysian youth.
Introduction
According to Teo et al. (2020), about 60% of the market turnover came from impulse buying by consumers. Is there a significant relationship between impulsive online shopping and subjective well-being among Malaysian young adults? This study aims to determine the relationship between online impulsive buying, materialism and subjective well-being among Malaysian young adults.
To study the relationship between online impulsive buying behavior and subjective well-being among Malaysian young adults. H1: There is a significant negative association between impulsive online shopping and subjective well-being among young adults in Malaysia. Thus, this has interest in the relationship between online impulsive buying behavior, materialism and SWB of young adults.
In short, some previous studies pointed to the relationship between online impulsive buying behavior and SWB. Therefore, this study aims to determine the relationship between online impulsive buying, materialism and SWB among Malaysian young adults.
Literature Review
It would increase stress when young people lack social support during the transition (Alsubaie et al., 2019). Impulsive buying behavior is a consumer behavior characterized by a sudden, persistent and strong impulse to immediately purchase a product (Wu et al., 2020). According to Olsen et al. 2021), this study contributes to the literature by investigating how impulsive buying tendency (IBT) and compulsive buying tendency (CBT) are related to SWB.
The finding of Handayani et al. 2018) aimed to study the relationship between impulsive buying and happiness. Apart from this, the study by Kumar et al. 2020) aimed to investigate the relationship between impulse buying and post-purchase regret in the context of low-involvement consumer goods. The study by Secapramana et al. 2021) aimed to investigate the relationship between impulse purchases, post-purchase regret and credit cards.
Research shows that impulsive buying is positively associated with happiness and well-being (Handayani et al., 2018; Olsen et al., 2021). However, some studies have shown that impulsive buying is correlated with adverse effects such as guilt, financial risk, etc. (Kumar et al., 2020; Secapramana et al., 2021) and thus negatively associated with happiness and SWB.
Methodology
The inclusion criteria for the study were that the nationality of the participants is Malaysian and the age range of the participants is between 18 and 25. There were three sections in the questionnaire (i.e. informed consent and information sheet, demographic information and instruments) (See Appendix C). Finally, before moving on to the demographic information, they will again be asked about their participants if they want to continue or not to continue the research.
For the age, occupation and income questions, a column was provided for the participants to type their answers. Instead, for the gender, religion and ethnicity questions, the participants had to choose their specific answers. A pilot study reflects all the protocols of the primary study and verifies the feasibility by evaluating the participants' inclusion and exclusion criteria (In, 2017).
Cronbach's alpha of the scales used in this study ranged from .773 to .885, which is considered highly reliable. In this section, the variable centrality materialism is excluded from the study, due to the low reliability in the pilot study. As a targeted sample, young adults were approached via social media (that is, Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, Instagram, and Microsoft Team) to complete the questionnaire.
For the first section of the questionnaire, an information sheet and consent form were provided to the participants. The participants had to sign the informed consent to get their permission to participate in the study. This ensured that the participants voluntarily participated in this study and consented to their responses being collected for academic use.
The demographic information of the participants (i.e. age, occupation, income, gender, race and ethnicity) was collected in the second part of the questionnaire. Assumption of normality consists of skewness and kurtosis, probability-probability (P-P) plot, Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test and Shapiro-Wilk test (S-W) were administered to test the normality of the statistics. For the study, it included informed consent and an information sheet, demographic information, Impulse Buy Scale (IBS; Beatty & Ferrell, 1998), Material Value Scale-Short Form (MVS; Richins, 2004), and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, 1985).
Findings
After the analysis of SPSS, it was found that the histograms were normally distributed for the variables, namely online impulsive buying, success materialism and centrality. The P-P chart shows that the observed data was closely on the diagonal for online impulsive buying, materialism, and subjective well-being. Based on the assumption of normality, three variables, online impulsive buying, materialism and subjective well-being, achieved a score of 4 over 5 for the normality indicators.
It was used to study the relationship between online impulsive buying behavior, materialism and SWB. The result showed that there was no significant relationship between online impulsive buying behavior and subjective well-being, r p=.06. Finally, Pearson's correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between online impulsive buying behavior, materialism, and SWB.
The plausible reason for the lack of a link between online impulse buying and SWB is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the current finding was contradicted by previous studies by Olsen et al. 2018), which showed a significant positive correlation between impulsive buying behavior and SWB among female adults. First, there are limited studies examining whether online impulse buying and materialism are associated with SWB among young adults in Malaysia; therefore, this present study has improved future research literature in the Malaysian context.
In addition, this study did not support a causal relationship between online impulsive buying, materialism, and SWB. Pearson's correlation coefficients were implemented to examine the relationship between X (that is, online impulsive buying and materialism) and Y (that is, subjective well-being). However, it did not necessarily mean that X causes Y, where the variables for online impulsive buying and materialism do not cause the SWB to change (Hung et al., 2017).
Additionally, this study examined the relationship between impulsive online shopping, materialism, and SWB using Pearson's analysis. Studying the causal relationship can contribute some important insights into whether impulse buying and materialism affect the level of SWB in the Malaysian context. Additionally, Pearson's Correlation Coefficients were conducted to examine whether online impulse buying and materialism have a correlation with SWB.
The finding did not support the third hypothesis, H3, which shows a significant negative relationship between happiness materialism and SWB (r=-.153). Materialism as a mediator of the relationship between subjective well-being and impulse buying tendency.
Kolmogorov-Smirnov
FOONG KAI JIE 2. CHONG KA YEE
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