The Research Of Purchase Intention Of ‘Seeking Common Ground While Shelving Differences’ Based On Social Identity And Consumers Need For Uniqueness

Former studies on social identity and consumers’ need for uniqueness are conducted separately. Some adopt a mere “contrastive” methodology even if both of their impacts on consumer purchase intention are recognised at the same time. Supported with relative theories on the reference group, this paper aims at finding evidence in the co-existence of motivation of both social identity and consumers’ need for uniqueness, and further exploring the ways of their impact on consumer purchase intention.Based on the research methods of experiments and questionnaires, the following conclusions are generated:1. The reference group has an impact on consumer purchase intentions. The order of consumer purchase intentions for different purchase groups are: the consumer purchase intention of desired group as reference group>the consumer purchase intention of member group as reference group>the consumer purchase intention of avoidance group as reference group.2. The social identity of consumers for product consumer group partially mediates the impact of reference group on consumer purchase intention.3. Both social identity and consumers’ need for uniqueness have impacts on consumer purchase intentions, which are specified as below. Social identity affects consumer choice on brands; consumers’ need for uniqueness impacts consumer choice on products; consumers’ need for uniqueness has a remarkable influence on product choice only under the brands accepted and identified by the member group.