Are our Hedonic Motivation and Emotions Triggered by Influencers’ Monetary Sales Promotions to Impulse Buy Online? : An explanatory study

Abstract: Background: Social media influencers provide their followers with different monetary sales promotions to increase purchases by the brands they endorse. Hedonic motivation and emotions initiate each other and are fulfilled through consumers' need to act. As a result, monetary sales promotions will encourage consumers to buy unplanned purchases. Previous research recommends additional quantitative research on sales promotions and influencers, and others propose more research to fill the gap on influencers' impact on society. The interest lies in how these, in turn, affect consumers' impulsive buying behavior.  Purpose: This study aims to explain the effects of hedonic motivation and emotions, triggered by social media influencers' monetary sales promotions on consumers' impulse buying online.   Methodology: This paper is explanatory, with a deductive approach to research while utilizing a quantitative strategy to achieve a cross-sectional research design. The study has three hypotheses that were deducted based on the concepts within the theoretical framework, and the data was collected through a self-completion questionnaire to receive its final results: if the hypotheses were rejected or accepted. Furthermore, the questionnaire received a total of 105 responses. Findings: All hypotheses were statistically insignificant when tested with the control variables. However, hedonic motivation was accepted when disregarding the control variables by only testing the independent variables against the dependent. Nevertheless, all hypotheses are rejected based on their statistical insignificance. Furthermore, the findings portray that the variables are too intercorrelated. While the results did not provide any practical contribution, it acknowledged the difficulties with measuring hedonic motivation, pleasure, and arousal simultaneously with impulse buying online.   Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, it is concluded that there are no positive effects of hedonic motivation and emotions and that these are triggered by social media influencers' monetary sales promotion on consumers' impulse buying behavior online.