Peer influence impact on contemporary Chinese millennials’ online shopping: An exploration of factors

Abstract

The Chinese Millennial generation are considered to be those who born in 1980’s and 1990’s in China. They are also driven- force generation of Chinese e-commerce. In order to attract more Chinese Millennial consumers, online sellers and e-commerce companies adopt recommendation system on the basis of consumers’ purchasing histories and personal preferences. Nevertheless, Chinese online retailers have not casted insight to purchase histories of peers, though peers have been proved to have effect on consumers’ purchase intention and behavior in many fields of study. The objective of this paper is to investigate peers’ influence on Chinese Millennial consumers’ purchase behavior. To be specific, this study examines the relationship between peers’ purchase histories and consumers’ purchase decisions among Chinese Millennials. Moreover, this study tries to reveal whether peers’ purchase histories have effect on consumers purchase perception such as perceived usefulness, perceived risk and purchase intention. This paper uses online questionnaires and SPSS software to figure out and analyze how Peer Influence affects Chinese millennials’ purchasing intention and decision in online shopping. The result shows that Peer Influence affects Chinese millennials’ purchase intention and decision in online shopping. Furthermore, perceived usefulness positively affects Chinese millennials’ purchase intention on online shopping while perceived risk negatively influences that. This paper provides suggestions for online retailers to attach importance to Peer Influence when advertising their products. In addition, this paper is useful to Taobao recommendation system for designing recommendation windows about peers’ purchase histories or preference on website pages.