A Research On The Impulse Buying Of Consumers In Online Group Buying

With the rapid development of e-commerce market, group buying as an emergingonline shopping type came into being. Since March2010，Meituan opened the preludeof the domestic group buying, group buying websites began to develop rapidly. Thenumber of group buying websites reached over5000on October2011. However,group buying exposed various problems due to low entry barriers and little industryregulation, such as serious product homogeneity, different service for group buyingcustomers and unguaranteed after-sales service. Trust crisis promoted the integrationof group buying industry, and changed the consumer behavior of group buyingcustomers. Nowadays, most of existed domestic group buying research analyzed fromthe phenomenon and business model issues, so in-depth study of consumerpsychology and behavior was scarce. Moreover, group buying focuses on the lowinvolvement products and these type products are more prone to impulse buying.Therefore，it has theoretical and practical significance to explore the characteristics ofimpulse buying behavior under the group buying situation.This study firstly reviewed the related research about online group buying andimpulse buying, summarized the developing history, problems and business models，defined group buying2.0like Groupon as the research object, concluded theinfluencing factors, theoretical explanation and measuring methods of impulse buying,and put forward the hypothesis based on the previous research. Moreover, this studytook the dining group buying product as the experimental product, conducted three2*2between subjects to explore two questions: one is whether the price discounts,time pressure and limited buying will have significant effects on impulse buyingintention of group buying customers. The other one is whether there are significantdifferences to consumers with different attitudes when the price discounts, timepressure and limited buying affect the impulse buying intention.This study came to the following conclusions:(l)Price discounts have nosignificant effects on impulse buying intention.(2)Time pressure and limited buyinghave significant effects on impulse buying intention.(3)Under high time pressure orlimited buying situation, consumers with Utilitarianism attitude have higher impulsebuying intention than consumers with Hedonism attitude, and under low time pressureor no limited buying situation, consumers with Hedonism attitude have higher impulse buying intention than consumers with Utilitarianism attitude.Finally, this study combined with research conclusions, proposed themanagement suggestions for group buying websites on product designing，and pointedout research limitations and suggestions for future research.