Defining key drivers of online impulse purchasing: A perspective of both impulse shoppers and system users

•Online impulse purchasing is an important part of online shopping.•Online impulse buyers are both the roles of shoppers and users in a virtual store.•Three concerns arise for individual psychological state, technology use, and trust belief.•This study proposes a model with the three issues, flow, website quality, and trust.•The three issues well predict impulse buying behavior as flow also plays a key mediator.

With the proliferation of e-commerce, a large part of online shopping is attributed to impulse buying. Hence, there is a particular necessity to understand impulse buying in the online context. Impulse shoppers incline to feel unable to control their tendencies and behaviors from various stimuli. Specifically, online consumers are both the impulse shoppers and the system users of websites in the purchase process. Impulse shoppers concern individual traits and system users cover the attributes of online stores. Online impulse buying therefore entails two key drivers, technology use and trust belief, and the mediator of flow experience. Grounding on flow experience, technology-use features, and trust belief, this study proposes a novel research model to examine impulse buying behavior in a complete manner. Data were collected from an online survey. Data analysis considers structural equation modeling technique with formative structure. Empirical results showed that flow experience is an important factor to affect impulse buying from its original drivers. Trust belief is also critical to impulse buying as perceived usefulness is not. Implications for managers and scholars are further discussed.