Research on the effects of reference group on impulse buying behavior

Based on Fisher & Rook´s studies in 1995, this research establishes a model, choosing reference group´s number (one person or multi-people) and reference group´s proposal (encouragement, discouragement or neutrality) as independent variables, and analyses the effect of those independent variables on impulse buying through the normative evaluation. This research makes use of scenario planning to collect data, carries out the empirical study on the survey of 286 undergraduates and utilizes SPSS13.0 to analyze the collected data. The findings test and verify that normative evaluation has moderating effect between impulse buying intention and impulse buying behavior, and find that reference group´s number and reference group´s proposal can affect significantly normative evaluation and affect impulse buying through the mediating effect of normative evaluation.