A new study from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, Houston, found that Americans who believe in equality are more impulsive shoppers. And these findings have implications for product marketing tactics in countries in which shoppers are more likely to buy on impulse, the university said.

According to the study, “Power-Distance Belief and Impulsive Buying,” power-distance belief (PDB) is the degree of power disparity the people of a culture expect and accept. It is measured on a scale of zero to 100, and the higher the PDB, the more a person accepts disparity and expects power inequality.

The study found that people who have a high PDB score tend to exhibit more self-control and are less impulsive when shopping. Americans have a low PDB score relative to people in countries such as China and India.

“In our studies, people with low PDB scores spent one-and-a-half times the amount spent by high-PDB individuals when buying daily items like snacks and drinks,” said Vikas Mittal, the Rice management professor who authored the study.

This effect was even more pronounced for "vice goods" — tempting products such as chocolate and candy — than for "virtue goods" such as yogurt and granola bars, the university said. The researchers found that low-PDB people spent twice as much on vice goods as high PDB people did.

The study results apply to everyday consumables such as candy, chocolate and potato chips, the university said. Extrapolating the results to goods such as perfume, clothes and other hedonic, more expensive categories has striking implications, Mittal said.

 “We know that 80 percent of luxury-good sales in the U.S. are impulsive,” he said.

To read the complete study — co-authored by Karen Page Winterich, assistant professor of marketing at Texas A&M University, and Yinlong Zhang, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas, San Antonio — go to here