The Impact of Purchases With Debit Cards on the Consumption of Unhealthy Food

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Master’s Student of Marketing Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 Professor, Faculty of Management and Accounting, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

3 Associate Professor in Economics, Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

4 Master’s Holder, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

5 Undergraduate Student of Medical Laboratory Sciences, Zahedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zahedan, Iran

Abstract

The present study aimed to determine whether consumers are more likely to buy unhealthy food items when paying with debit cards compared to the time when they pay in cash, analyzing the effects of payment methods on the impulsive purchase of unhealthy products. To this end, the purchase behavior of a sample of 760 consumers was analyzed via a preliminary study and three main studies. To collect the data, consumer invoices, questionnaires, and purchase simulation techniques were used. The findings indicated that even though the participants who were randomly placed in the debit card payment group were aware of the unhealthiness of the food products, they still purchased such products, clearly showing their impulsive behavior. In cash purchases, the number of unhealthy food items in the shopping basket of consumers proved to be lower compared to when the consumers paid with debit cards. Furthermore, paying with debit cards reduced the pain of paying, ultimately raising the purchase of unhealthy food items.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Ainslie, G., & Haslam, N. (1992). Self-control. In G. Loewenstein & J. Elster (Eds.), Choice over time (pp. 177–209). Russell Sage Foundation.
Baumeister, R. F., Heatherton, T. F., & Tice, D. M. (1994). Losing control: How and why people fail at self-regulation. Academic press.
Bell, D. R., & Lattin, J. M. (1998). Shopping behavior and consumer preference for store price format: Why “large basket” shoppers prefer EDLP. Marketing Science, 17, 66-88.
Berry, J. (1994). Don’t leave home without it. Business Week, 21, 76-77.
Burgoyne, C. B., & Lea, S. E. G. (2006). Money is material. Science, 314, 1091-1092.
Chandon, P. and B. Wansink (2007). "Is Obesity Caused by Calorie Underestimation? A Psychophysical Model of Meal Size Estimation." Journal of Marketing Research 44(1): 84-99.
Chatterjee, P., & Rose, R. L. (2012). Do payment mechanisms change the way consumers perceive products? Journal of Consumer Research, 38() , .
Feinberg, R. A. (1986). Credit cards as spending facilitating stimuli: A conditioning interpretation. Journal of Consumer Research, 13(3), 348-356.
Gray, J. A. (1987). The psychology of fear and stress. Cambridge University Press.
Green, J. (1997). A clear line of demarcation. Credit Card Management 10, (9), 14-17.
Hirschman, E. C. (1979). Differences in consumer purchase behaviours by credit card payment system. Journal of Consumer Research, 6, 58-66.
Inman, J. J., Winer, R. S., & Ferraro, R. (2009). The interplay among category characteristics, customer characteristics, and customer activities on in-store decision making. Journal of Marketing, 73(5), 19-29.
Khan, J., & Craig-Lees, M. (2009). Cashless transactions: Perceptions of money in mobile
Kivetz, R., & Simonson, I. (2002). Self-control for the righteous: Toward a theory of pre-commitment to indulgence. Journal of Consumer Research, 29(2), 199-217.
Knutson, B., Rick, S., Wimmer, G. E., Prelec, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2007). Neural predictors of purchases. Neuron, 53, 147-157.
Kross, E., et al. (2005). "When Asking “Why” Does Not Hurt Distinguishing Rumination from Reflective Processing of Negative Emotions." Psychological Science 16(9): 709-715.
MacDonald, G., & Leary, M. R. (2005). Why does social exclusion hurt? The relationship between social and physical pain. Psychological Bulletin, 13(12), .
Maddah, M., & Sharami, S. H. (2010). Obesity among Iranian old adult women in urban and rural areas in Gilan. International Journal of Cardiology, 145(1), 44-45 .
McDonald, S., Oates, C. J., Young, C. W., & Hwang, K. (2006). Toward sustainable consumption: Researching voluntary simplifiers. Psychology & Marketing, 23(6), 515-534.
Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106(1), 3 .
Mishra, H., et al. (2006). "Money: A Bias for the Whole." Journal of Consumer Research 32(4): 541-549.
Moghimi-Dehkordi, B., Safaee, A., Vahedi, M., Pourhoseingholi, A., Pourhoseingholi, M. A., Ashtari, S., & Zali, M. R. (2013). Overweight and obesity and related factors in the urban Iranian population aged between 20 to 84 years. Annals of Medical and Health Sciences Research, 3(2), 171-176.
Morewedge, C. K., Holtzman, L., & Epley, N. (2007). Unfixed resources: Perceived costs, consumption, and the accessible account effect. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(December), 459-467.
Nocera, J. (2013). A piece of the action: How the middle class joined the money class. Simon and Schuster.
Park, J., Lee, C., & Thomas, M. (2020). Why do cashless payments increase unhealthy consumption? The decision-risk inattention hypothesis .
Paulus, M. P., & Stein, M. B. (2006). An insular view of anxiety. Biological Psychiatry, 60(4), 383-387.
Payab, M., Kelishadi, R., Qorbani, M., Motlagh, M. E., Ranjbar, S. H., Ardalan, G., Zahedi, H., Chinian, M., Asayesh, H., Larijani, B., & Heshmat, R. (2015). Association of junk food consumption with high blood pressure and obesity in Iranian children and adolescents: The CASPIAN-IV Study. Jornal de Pediatria, 91(2), 196-205.
Prelec, D., & Loewenstein, G. (1998). The red and the black: Mental accounting of savings and debt. Marketing Science, 17(1), 4-28.
Prelec, D., & Simester, D. (1998). Always leave home without it: A research note. Marketing Letters, … (12), 1-5.
Prelec, D. and D. Simester (2001). "Always Leave Home Without It: A Further Investigation of the Credit-Card Effect on Willingness to Pay." Marketing Letters 12(1): 5-12.
Raghubir, P., & Srivastava, J. (2008). Monopoly money: The effect of payment coupling and form on spending behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14(3), 213-225.
Raghunathan, R., et al. (2006). "The Unhealthy = Tasty Intuition and Its Effects on Taste Inferences, Enjoyment, and Choice of Food Products." Journal of Marketing 70(4): 170-184.
Ramanathan, S. and G. Menon (2006). "Time-Varying Effects of Chronic Hedonic Goals on Impulsive Behavior." Journal of Marketing Research 43.
Rick, S. I., Cryder, C. E., & Loewenstein, G. (2008). Tightwads and spendthrifts. Journal of Consumer Research, 34, 767-782.
Rook, D. W. (1987). The buying impulse. Journal of Consumer Research, 14(2), 189-199.
Runnemark, E., Hedman, J., & Xiao, X., (2015). Do consumers pay more using debit cards than cash? Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 14(5), 285-291.
Schreft, S. L. (2006, 4-6 April). How & why do consumers choose their payment methods? (Research Working Paper). Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Shah, A., Bettman, J., & Payne, J. (2014). Psychological tangibility of money influences loss aversion and propensity for gambling. ACR North American Advances.
Shiv, B., & Fedorikhin, A. (2002). Spontaneous versus controlled influences of stimulus-based affect on choice behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 87(March), 342-370.
Soman, D. (2001). Effects of payment mechanism on spending behavior: The role of rehearsal and immediacy of payments. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), 460–474.
Soman, D. (2003). The effect of payment transparency on consumption: Quasi-experiments from the field. Marketing Letters, 14(3), 173-183.
Soman, D., & Gourville, J. T. (1998). Transaction decoupling: The effects of price bundling on the decision to consume. Report-Marketing Science Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Soster, R. L., Gershoff, A. D., & Bearden, W. O. (2014). The bottom dollar effect: The influence of spending to zero on pain of payment and satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(3), 656-677.
Thomas, M., Desai, K. K., & Seenivasan, S. (2011). How credit card payments increase unhealthy food purchases: Visceral regulation of vices. Journal of Consumer Research, 38(June), … .
Ubel, P. A. (2009). Free market madness. Harvard Business Press.
Van der Horst, F., & Matthijsen, E. (2013). The irrationality of payment behavior. DNB Occasional Studies, 11(4), … .
Wertenbroch, K. (1998). Consumption self-control by rationing purchase quantities of virtue and vice. Marketing Science, 17(4), 317-337.
WHO. 2005. [online] Available at: <https://www.who.int/health-topics/obesity> [Accessed 20 November 2016].
Zavestoski, S. (2002). The social-psychological bases of anti-consumption attitudes. Psychology & Marketing, 9(2), 149-165.
Zellermayer, O. (1996). The pain of paying [Unpublished PhD dissertation]. Carnegie Mellon University.
Zhou, X., Feng, C., He, L., & Gao, D.-G. (2008). Toward an integrated understanding of love and money: Intrinsic and extrinsic pain management mechanisms. Psychological Inquiry, 19(3-4), 208-220.
 
Interdisciplinary Journal of Management Studies (Formerly known as Iranian Journal of Management Studies)
Volume 15, Issue 1
January 2022
Pages 1-17

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics