Background: The share of impulsively made purchases in all online expenditures is constantly rising. With regards to the strongly growing e-commerce, this gains on importance for business and research. Scholars already found that emotions affect and enhance impulsive buying behavior. Due to the shift from a rational to an emotional consumer who shops for hedonic purposes, especially clothes are considered to be common items for engaging in impulsive buying behavior online.

Purpose: By studying the phenomenon of negative emotions affecting impulsive buying behavior, the purpose of this research is to explore the specific reasons for these negative emotions to serve as a motive for people to engage in impulsive buying behavior in an online fashion context.

Method: To fulfil the purpose of this thesis being of exploratory nature, a qualitative research design was applied. The empirical data was gathered through twelve semistructured interviews. Using a general inductive approach, the data has been analyzed and interpreted incorporating a thematic analysis.

Conclusion: This study shows that negative emotions positively affect impulsive buying behavior in an online fashion context. The findings imply that several different negative emotions can lead to an urge to buy impulsively. Furthermore, three accompanying constructs (i.e., Contextualized Factors, Social Pressure and Motivators) were found to embed the negative emotions, forming a process. The analysis resulted in the development of a conceptual framework depicting this process within an online fashion context.