Social arousal affecting buying fever: Construct development and testing

Abstract

This research defined the construct of Social Arousal taken from a wide spread phenomenon known as 'Buying Fever'. We conducted semi-structured interviews and performed an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to develop the construct of social arousal. In research one, 194 university students performed a survey questioner. The results of our reliability and validity tests show that the construct of Social Arousal under the condition of Buying Fever is composited by 6 different dimensions namely word-of-mouth, advertisement, conformity, fashion, uniqueness and time-pressure. In research two the data driven from 316 subjects confirmed the construct results from study one, and the empirical factor analysis results from multi-step modeling comparisons suggest that the 6 dimensions have excellent levels of fitness. Additionally, this twopart research confirmed the Social Arousal conditions found in Buying Fever and the positive correlation amongst the relationships between the 6-dimentions we defined, social comparison and consumer impulse.