Social Commerce & FOMO: Decoding Gen Z's Fashion Psychology

Ms. Prakruti Bhalavat, Fashion Management Scholar, Department of Fashion Management Studies,

National Institute of Fashion Technology, Ministry of Textiles, Govt of India

Abstract

The research study investigates how social commerce platforms create Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) which affects Indian fashion consumers to make impulse purchases. The research study uses the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory as its primary framework to study how social commerce platforms create FOMO which affects Indian fashion consumers. The study found that eight major Indian social commerce platforms use four psychological drivers to predict unplanned fashion purchases which include FOMO intensity and hedonic motivation and perceived scarcity and social identity. The study found that platform-created FOMO triggers lead to decreased cognitive thinking processes while increasing impulse buying. Different demographic groups show distinct buying patterns that stem from four FOMO triggers which platforms create. The research study proves that the S-O-R framework functions as an effective model for studying how FOMO influences consumer behavior in India's various social commerce platforms.

Keywords: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), impulse buying, social commerce, Indian fashion, Gen Z

Introduction

The social commerce market in India is expected to achieve a value of USD 70 billion by 2030, with fashion and apparel emerging as the dominant product category across nearly all social commerce platforms (IBEF, 2024). The original two platforms of Instagram Shopping and Meesho have developed into a complex system that includes multiple platforms, which now features Myntra's influencer-led live commerce, Flipkart Fashion's Big Billion Days events, YouTube's shoppable video overlays, WhatsApp's personalised catalogue broadcasts, ShareChat's vernacular fashion selling, and Snapchat's augmented reality try-on features. The different platforms establish separate social commerce models, but they all operate under one main psychological force, which is Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).

The platforms implement FOMO through their special time-limited promotions and their viral trend releases and their endorsements by social media influencers and their countdowns to live sales and their notifications about peer purchases and their signals of limited product availability. The stimuli create hedonic arousal which disables cognitive control and permits people to make spontaneous unplanned fashion purchases. The combination of India's 750-million-strong smartphone user base and the 4.2 hours daily social media usage of Gen Z users (Statista 2024) and its young population who strive for success creates a perfect environment for FOMO-induced impulse buying which all eight platforms examined in this research use to their advantage.

Academic research about FOMO-driven impulse buying in Indian multi-platform social commerce remains limited because of the phenomenon's extensive commercial impact. The study uses the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) as its theoretical foundation which shows how platform stimuli (S) create environmental cues to trigger FOMO along with psychological arousal states (O) that lead to impulse purchase behavior (R).The study examines eight different platform contexts to test the S-O-R model which enables researchers to study FOMO and impulse buying behavior in Indian fashion social commerce across various platforms.

Neuromarketing is an emerging interdisciplinary field that studies how marketing activities affect consumer behavior by combining knowledge from marketing and neuroscience and psychology. The traditional marketing research methods which include surveys and focus groups cannot measure the hidden mental processes that drive people to choose products. Neuromarketing employs multiple techniques which include EEG and fMRI and eye-tracking and biometric measurements to study consumer responses toward branding and advertisements and product design.

The fashion industry depends on emotional appeal and aesthetic value and brand perception to determine how customers make buying decisions, so neuromarketing research helps businesses understand customer behavior toward fashion products and retail environments and promotional materials.

Objectives

• To review literature on the impact of social commerce FOMO triggers on impulse buying behaviour in Indian fashion consumers across multiple platforms.
• To identify key psychological variables mediating FOMO and impulse buying in platform-specific contexts.
• To propose a multi-platform conceptual framework and managerial recommendations based on the review.

Research Methodology

This research adopts a theoretical qualitative approach and through the literature review encompassing papers in the related field presents its findings, which are main, through the analysis of the primary categories of the peer-reviewed journals and scholarly articles. The publication of such data was made through thematic analysis which determined the patterns, gaps, and implications for future studies in textile and fashion management. The review covers sources from the latest publications which support the review's argument about the industry's trends and its contemporary relevance. The process of selecting the sources has been influenced by the ethical considerations with a focus on the open-access and trustworthy publication.

Literature Review

The S-O-R model (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) forms the theoretical foundation of this study. Platform stimuli — Instagram's fashion reels, Meesho's flash deal banners, Myntra's End of Reason Sale countdowns, Flipkart's Big Billion Days purchase notifications, YouTube's shoppable video overlays, WhatsApp's catalogue broadcasts, ShareChat's vernacular fashion videos, and Snapchat's AR try-on features — represent the environmental inputs which activate FOMO and hedonic arousal, leading to impulse purchase behavior. Eroglu et al. (2001) confirmed that online atmospheric cues function as S-O-R stimuli which predict impulsive purchasing, a finding which applies directly to social commerce through multiple platforms in India.

Two main channels enable FOMO (Przybylski et al., 2013) to function across different platforms. The first channel establishes social comparison FOMO when users watch their friends display trendy items on Instagram and Snapchat. The second channel establishes scarcity FOMO when users encounter emergency alerts on Meesho, Myntra, and Flipkart Fashion. The multi-platform system that exists in India generates cross-platform FOMO compounding because customers watch fashion trends on Instagram which they later find available at discounted prices through Meesho while they watch styling tutorials on YouTube and receive promotional messages through WhatsApp throughout a single day. Verma and Gupta (2021) confirmed that FOMO intensity significantly predicts fashion impulse purchases among Indian Gen Z consumers, mediated by hedonic shopping motivation.

Impulse buying describes an unplanned purchase which people make because they experience strong emotional feelings while they spend less time to think about their decision (Rook, 1987). The fashion industry shows strong impulse buying because its products provide high hedonic value and reach show high symbolic value to customers (Hausman, 2000). Instagram and YouTube extend aesthetic experiences to users which leads to higher impulse buying while Myntra and Flipkart Fashion create urgency through their mega-sale events and Meesho uses its price-countdown system as an aggressive marketing tool and WhatsApp Commerce leverages FOMO to generate impulse buying through its social trust system which people develop with others. Kaur and Singh (2020) proved that Indian consumers who watch fashion content on Instagram show more impulse buying behavior than consumers who shop in physical stores.

The biological foundation of FOMO impulse buying across various platforms gets supported by neuromarketing research. Knutson et al. (2007) discovered that reward and scarcity stimuli activate the nucleus accumbens while they diminish prefrontal cortex functions which handle logical thought processes. Morin (2011) demonstrated that social commerce design elements initiate dopaminergic release which strengthens the transition from browsing to purchasing. Snapchat's AR try-on features make customers feel ownership rights, which increases their chances of buying products according to Patel and Mehta's research from 2022. The 40-minute average session duration for Indian Gen Z users on YouTube creates extended hedonic arousal which makes them more likely to experience impulse control problems than users of other platforms who engage in shorter scrolling activities.

Different FOMO types get triggered by each social media platform. Instagram and Snapchat create aspirational social identity FOMO which leads users to buy products for the purpose of demonstrating their membership in particular social groups and their possession of cultural knowledge (Escalas & Bettman, 2005). Meesho and WhatsApp Commerce activate savings and deal FOMO, which particularly affects price-sensitive consumers who belong to Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets. Myntra and Flipkart Fashion create dual aspirational-scarcity FOMO through their celebrity-led mega-sales which combine social identity pressure with time-limited sales opportunities. ShareChat and Moj, India's leading vernacular social commerce platforms with over 350 million users, create community belonging FOMO through their regional-language content which uses micro-influencers to generate social agreement in markets that do not use English as their primary language, a demographic segment that current research fails to address (Jain & Sharma, 2021). YouTube Shopping creates narrative immersion FOMO through its extended fashion haul videos and styling content which generates viewer interest during multiple viewing sessions until it reveals shoppable links (Choudhary & Dutta, 2022).

Hedonic motivation (Arnold & Reynolds, 2003) serves as the primary factor that affects how FOMO impulse buying works which reaches its highest level through Snapchat and Instagram (visual-AR hedonic arousal) and YouTube (narrative hedonic immersion) and WhatsApp and Meesho because FOMO drives conversions through utilitarian-scarcity. Singh and Chaudhary (2020) found that Indian shoppers with high-hedonic tendencies showed three times greater FOMO-based impulse buying than shoppers who focused on their needs. Perceived scarcity functions as the most common FOMO precursor which all platforms use to create purchasing pressure that operates from Meesho's price-validity timers to Instagram's 24-hour disappearing Stories to Flipkart's real-time stock counters (Mishra & Prasad 2019). Social identity motivation further predicts users of aspirational platforms who make impulse buying decisions (Roy & Mukherjee 2018) whereas WhatsApp's interpersonal selling model uses social obligation dynamics to transform FOMO into purchasing behavior which occurs with exceptional efficiency during browsing sessions.

Insights from Literature Review

The research shows that FOMO-based impulse buying in India functions through multiple social commerce platforms. The Stimulus–Organism–Response model shows that platform elements which include reels and flash deals and countdown timers and purchase notifications function as triggers which produce psychological effects that result in customers making unplanned purchases. Users of Instagram and Snapchat experience social comparison FOMO because they must follow their friends who display trendy items. Meesho and Myntra and Flipkart create scarcity FOMO through their flash sales which use countdown timers and display limited-stock alerts. 

Cross-platform influence serves as another important finding. Fashion trends usually reach consumers through Instagram which shows fashion content, while YouTube provides styling tutorials, and Meesho and Flipkart offer discounted products for consumers who want to buy. The connected experience results in stronger FOMO while people spend money on unplanned purchases. Hedonic motivation creates stronger effects because visually appealing content and storytelling and AR try-on features produce emotional excitement that drives customers to make speedy purchasing choices. 

Social trust establishes a vital function for WhatsApp because personal connections with social groups enable users to transform FOMO into actual sales. Social commerce impulse buying patterns depend on social comparison and scarcity signals and hedonic behaviors and cross-platform shopping patterns according to the research results. Neuromarketing offers fashion industry companies useful neuromarketing tools which help them understand customer behavior through emotional appeal and aesthetic elements and brand perception in their shopping patterns.

Findings

The research results show that FOMO-induced impulse purchasing in India connects through multiple social commerce platforms. Users receive trend information and promotional content and social activity updates through Instagram and YouTube and Snapchat and WhatsApp and Meesho which together shape their buying patterns. The Stimulus–Organism–Response model shows that platform functions including reels and flash sales and countdown timers and AR try-ons and purchase alerts function as stimuli which produce psychological reactions leading to impulse buying through FOMO and hedonic excitement. The study identifies two major forms of FOMO influencing buying behaviour: social comparison FOMO and scarcity FOMO. Social comparison happens mostly through visual social networks that include Instagram and Snapchat whereas e-commerce platforms like Myntra and Flipkart use flash sales and limited-stock alerts to create scarcity-based triggers. Hedonic motivation and visually engaging content further intensify impulse buying, while social trust on WhatsApp commerce strengthens the conversion of FOMO into actual purchasing behaviour.

Conclusion

The study demonstrates that FOMO impulse buying in Indian fashion social commerce operates as a neurological psychological system which maintains its normal functioning across Instagram Meesho Myntra Flipkart Fashion YouTube Shopping WhatsApp Commerce ShareChat and Snapchat with platform base differences. The platform-based stimuli create different FOMO archetypes which include aspirational FOMO and scarcity FOMO and savings FOMO and community-belonging FOMO. These archetypes lead to hedonic arousal and social identity anxiety which decrease cognitive resistance and result in fashion purchases that consumers make in India. The multiple platforms which expose users to FOMO create interconnected effects which lead to greater impulse buying behavior than research based on individual platforms can account for. The S-O-R framework serves as an effective theoretical framework which applies to all platforms within this field of study. Marketers need to create different FOMO marketing tactics for each platform while consumer protection groups and policymakers must understand how social commerce triggers affect people's minds so they can create ethical standards that will protect the financial safety of Gen Z users in India who are most vulnerable to FOMO.

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