Abstract
We examined the effect of buying impulsiveness on arousal in non-shopping and shopping contexts. In a within-subject design, participants viewed and rated pictures of shopping scenes and non-shopping scenes. During that procedure, we measured pupil dilation with an eye-tracker. The results demonstrate that impulsive buyers become more aroused by viewing pictures of shopping scenes, compared to non-impulsive buyers. This occurred for hedonic shopping situations as well as for utilitarian shopping situations. Importantly, the effect did not emerge for non-shopping scenes. Moreover, arousal of impulsive buyers is independent from, conscious cognitive evaluation of the scenes in the pictures.