A Study Of Individual Impulse Buying In Virtual Communities

Impulse buying accounts for a sizeable proportion in consumer shopping which has been widely received the extensive attention of scholars and practitioners in psychology, marketing and economics field, etc. With the fast growing number of the Virtual Community, impulse buying has been stretched out in this new place. There are little research on context difference between virtual communities and network platform, and impulsive buying in virtual communities. Based on theories of Model S-O-R and traditional impulsive purchasing, this research proposes the stimulating factors of the Community activities, virtual currency payment and the reference group sharing similar interests as well as the interaction and trust. Meanwhile, the paper inquires into whether or not these five stimulating factors affect consumer emotion, and investigates if consumers in the virtual community were roused to put into impulse buying intention by emotional reaction. After quantitative analysis and theoretical exploration, some important results and conclusions are as follows:(1) By means of Structural Equation Modeling, the results confirmed that community activities, virtual currency payment, the reference group sharing similar interests, interaction and trust have a positive impact on the pleasure dimension and arousal dimension of emotion. Among them, the reference group sharing similar interests has the most profound effect on pleasure dimension and interaction has the greatest influence on arousal dimension.(2) Virtual currency payment had no significant effect on emotional reaction, however, it has a direct significant impact on impulsive purchase intention.(3)The arousal dimension significantly affects impulse buying intention. The pleasure dimension has no direct impact on the impulse purchase intention. But it acts on impulse purchase intention through arousal.This study establishes the model of the individual impulsive purchase intention in virtual communities which contributes to a better understanding of consumer behavior in the virtual community. What’s more, it can be useful for the design and evaluation of marketing program in virtual communities operation.