#buy now, pain later?
Buy Now Pay Later (#bnpl) has become an increasingly attractive and convenient #payment method for #consumers, because it allows them to pay for #purchases in a series of interest-free installments over a short period of time.
However, its impact on customer purchases has been unexplored so far.
In their recent Journal of Marketing paper, Stijn Maesen and Dionysius Ang fill this void.
They find that BNPL installment payments increase purchase incidences and amounts, particularly among smaller (vs. larger) basket shoppers and shoppers who rely more heavily on credit (vs. debit) cards before adoption.
Why? Since BNPL installment (vs. lump sum) payments decrease consumers' perceived financial constraints by reducing perceived costs and facilitating #budget control.
It would be interesting to see whether these effects also hold for financially vulnerabe consumers.
In this context, the JM paper on dynamic consumer financial vulnerability by Linda Salisbury, Gergana Nenkov, Simon Blanchard, Ron hill, Alex Brown, and Kelly Martin is a highly recommend read.
study links in the first comment.
BNPL indeed empowers customers with financial flexibility, making online purchases safer and more accessible while driving higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction for merchants. ⭐