Research Article
Forecasting Unplanned Purchase Behavior under Buy-One
Get-One-Free Promotions Using Functional
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy
SuJin Bak ,
1
Minsun Yeu ,
2
and Jichai Jeong
1
1
Department of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea
2
College of Business Administration, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 44610, Republic of Korea
Correspondence should be addressed to Minsun Yeu; minsunyeu@ulsan.ac.kr and Jichai Jeong; jcj@korea.ac.kr
Received 28 June 2022; Revised 4 October 2022; Accepted 8 October 2022; Published 7 November 2022
Academic Editor: Jesus Peral
Copyright © 2022 SuJin Bak et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
It is very important for consumers to recognize their wrong shopping habits such as unplanned purchase behavior (UPB). Te
traditional methods used for measuring the UPB in qualitative and quantitative studies have some drawbacks because of human
perception and memory. We proposed a UPB identifcation methodology applied with the brain•computer interface technique
using a support vector machine (SVM) along with a functional near•infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Hemodynamic signals and
behavioral data were collected from 33 subjects by performing Task 1 which included the Buy•One•Get•One•Free (BOGOF) and
Task 2 which excluded the BOGOF condition. Te acquired data were calculated with 6 time•domain features and then classifed
them using SVM with 10•cross validations. Tereafter, we evaluated whether the results were reliable using the area under the
receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). As a result, we achieved average accuracy greater than 94%, which is reliable
because of the AUC values above 0.97. We found that the UPB brain activity was more relevant to Task 1 with the BOGOF
condition than with Task 2 in the prefrontal cortex. UPBs were sufciently derived from self•reported measurement, indicating
that the subjects perceived increased impulsivity in the BOGOF condition. Terefore, this study improves the detection and
understanding of UPB as a path for a computer•aided detection perspective for rating the severity of UPBs.
1. Introduction
Consumers have experienced fnancial problems such as
excessive consumption, household debt, and monetary
losses because of unplanned purchases [1]. Many studies
have shown that reasonable consumption is difcult because
unplanned purchase behavior (UPB) occurs emotionally or
impulsively [2]. Many studies have reported that UPB can
occur under situations that encourage people’s impulsive•
ness such as price discounts and time pressures [3, 4]. UPBs
are defned as a purchase of any item that consumers had not
planned to purchase before entering the shops [5]. UPBs are
increased by promotion strategies [6] such as price dis•
counts, coupons, and money•back guarantee. Especially,
“Buy•One•Get•One•Free” (BOGOF) is one of the most
popular promotion strategies. A previous study found that
over 53.3% of 192 respondents preferred BOGOF over other
promotions [7]. Tis promotion strategy plays an important
role in eliciting consumer’s UPBs.
To assess whether consumers’ UPB is, there are tradi•
tional research methods such as interviews, surveys, and
questionnaires [8]. However, they rely on consumers’
subjective perceptions and memories [9]. Furthermore,
there is still a lack of tools and equipment for empirically
measuring UPBs. To solve this issue, there are recent studies
that have reported empirical evidence for unplanned pur•
chases through brain signal measuring equipment [10].
Tere are noninvasive equipment for brain measurements
such as electroencephalogram (EEG) [11, 12] and functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) [13]. Figure 1 describes
the noninvasive brain signal measurement equipment that is
harmless to the human body. EEG records voltage
Hindawi
Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience
Volume 2022, Article ID 1034983, 12 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/1034983