A pilot study on the effect of cognitive and hedonic shopping motivations and reference groups on purchase intention and behavior of consumers

The first objective of this study is to examine the reference group effect, which is discussed under three headings including informative, normative and value-expressive influence, on purchase intention and purchase behavior of consumer. Additionally, analyzing the moderating role of hedonic and cognitive (utilitarian) shopping motivations in the reference group effect on purchase intention of consumer is another objective of this research. Ultimately, it is also aimed to examine whether the reference group effect differentiates depending on the demographic variables. For the purpose of examining the causality between the variables determined within the objective, data were collected by applying online survey method on 600 persons. Structural Equation Model was established and hypotheses were tested. As a result of the study, it was observed that the informative influence of the reference groups has a significant effect on the purchase intention while normative and value-expressive influence have no effect on the purchase intention. It has been concluded that, effect of informative and value-expressive influence of the reference groups on purchase intention differentiate by demographics while normative impact remains unresponsive to demographic variability. Ultimately, it was observed that hedonic and cognitive shopping motivations have a moderating role in the effect of informative, normative and value-expressive influence of reference groups on purchase intention.