Study on Herd Behavior and Its Influence on Consumer Impulse Buying Behavior during Online Shopping Festival

——An Empirical Study based on Social Influence Theory and Herd Behavior YIN Meng1，LI Qi2 and LIU Yang3

（1.Henan University of Animal Husbandry and Economy，Zhengzhou，Henan450045，China；2.Xi'an Jiaotong University，

Xi'an ，Shaanxi710061，China ；3.Jilin University of Finance and Economics，Changchun，Jilin130117，China） Abstract：Since Alibaba’s first debut of“Double 11”Shopping Festival in 2009，online shopping festival has attracted increasing more attention from both the researchers and practitioners. In order to examine the herd behavior and the impulse buying behavior during online shopping festival，based on the scenario of herd behavior and social influence theory，the authors design the questionnaire to collect empirical data. It shows that：social influence has significant impact on imitating others and discounting own information during online shopping festival，but has no direct significant impact on impulse buying behavior； and discounting own information and imitating others affect consumer impulse buying behavior，and the influence effect of imitating others is much greater. So for shopping platform and sellers，during shopping festival，they should adopt rational marketing strategy，organize more activities，and formulate more incentive mechanism to encourage consumers to publicize；and they should optimize the exhibition content and pattern for product and service in the shopping festival，try to demonstrate them as detailed as possible to reduce the information uncertainty，guide the rational consumption，and reduce the cost of impulse buying. For consumers，they should rationally take part in the shopping festival，avoid blind shopping and impulse buying，and reduce their own shopping cost and the sellers’cost.

Key words：online shopping festival；social influence；herd behavior；impulse buying behavior