Abstract:

As a common and high frequency form of irrational purchase, consumer impulsive buying behavior has been the research focus of marketing scholars for many years. The bulk of studies have paid more attention on the process and the outcome of an impulsive decision made by consumer alone, but few of studies pay more attention on group consumers’ impulsive buying behaviors which happened in a relationship situation. The present study focuses on the mechanisms of group consumers’ impulse buying behaviors under the contradictory circumstances. A few of experimental results show that although the first reactions of group consumers are not identical, but in the end, they will perform consistent impulse buying behaviors. The reason is that consumers with different characteristics of impulsive buying tendency hold totally different interpretations about target goals: consumers with higher tendency of impulsive buying aim to pursuit the hedonic goals; in contrast, consumers with lower impulsive buying tendency focus on the social attribution goals. External attribution could reduce the consumer’s guilt which leads to the failure of self-control. Meanwhile, the intensity of relationship (strong ties and weak ties) can take a regulatory role.

Key words: relationship context, impulsive buying, goal theory, self-control, external attribution