How Do Online Social Interactions Affect Consumers’Impulse Purchase?

Impulse purchase is a very pervasive phenomenon and takes a considerable proportion in individual’s daily purchase behavior. According to the relevant report,70%of the consumer consumption behavior belongs to impulse purchase. The studies of impulse buying originated from traditional retail environments. Since the21st century, impulse purchase has become an important concern in online shopping context. The online shopping has no limitation of time and space, low searching cost and provides a very convenient way for individuals’to buy things. These advantages make it easy for consumers to trigger impulse buying while they are browsing on the shopping websites. Prior studies showed that shoppers were more impulsive in online shopping context than in offline retail environments.Along with the prevalence of Web2.0technologies, consumer-generated content has become an importance driving force in online marketplaces. Prior research points out that consumers’purchase decisions are likely to be affected by their online social interactions with others. Previous scholars suggest that online social interactions can similarly be divided into opinion-based social interaction and behavior-based interaction; the former, also known as online reviews, the latter, which refers to observational learning. However, prior studies mostly paid attention to planned purchasing. To our knowledge, little has investigated the effects of consumer-generated content on impulse purchase. Previous scholars suggest that on the shopping websites, consumers’reviews and the large sales volume of product could arouse the potential consumers’curiosity to increase their likelihood of impulse purchase. These prove that social interactions are likely to facilitate consumer’s impulse purchase. However, there are few empirical studies at present to explore how social interactions affect impulse purchase of consumers.This study attempts to fill the gap discussed above and sheds light on the effects of online social interactions on consumers’impulse purchase based on the stimulus-organism-response theory and consumption impulse formation and enactment framework. In specific, we propose that social interactions factors (i.e., review quality, source credibility and observational learning) might be the stimuli influencing consumers’perceived usefulness and positive affect (organism), which further affect their browsing behavior, urge to buy impulsively and actual impulse purchase behavior; we also consider the moderating effect of self-control between buying impulse and impulse buying.This dissertation used online survey method to collect data and selected three popular Chinese online group shopping websites as research sites (ju.taobao.com, dianping.com and meituan.com). A total of315valid responses were finally collected. Partial Least Squares (PLS3.0) and SPSS17.0were used to analyze the data and assess the research model. The results showed that, except for the non-significant influence of review quality on positive affect, all the other hypotheses were supported. We got the results as follows:1) review quality, source credibility and observational learning both had significant impacts on perceived usefulness, yet only source credibility and observational learning were found to be important antecedents of positive affect;2) both perceived usefulness and positive affect significantly affected browsing behavior;3) positive affect and browsing had positive effects on urge to buy impulsively, which in turn, affected consumers’actual impulse buying behavior;4) the personal trait-self-control, was found to have significant moderating influence on the relationship between impulse buying urges and actual impulse buying behavior.Finally, this dissertation discusses the theoretical implications for research on impulse buying and information systems domain. The results of this paper contribute to enrich the S-O-R theory and consumption impulse formation and enactment framework, and extend our understanding regarding the influences of online social interactions; bringing in the role of cognitive factor (i.e., self-control) will help explain and predict consumers’impulse purchase behavior better. Meanwhile, this study also provides practical suggestions for designers of group shopping websites, as well as online retailers. They could design an effective review format and offer incentives to make consumers post high-quality reviews, and build online social networks to improve the credibility of review source. Also, they could emphasize positive observational learning. In addition, this research discusses some limitations of the research and proposes opportunities for future research.