Consumer Herding Behavior: An Investigation of the Mediating and Moderating Effects

This study will examine the transmission process from credible source to
consumers’ herding behavior from the perspectives of social identity theory, social influence theory, and communication theory. This study expects to find that social influence (i.e., informational influence and normative influence), individual influence (i.e., cognition-based trust), and a consumer’s identification with an online reviewer as a mechanism of how consumers perceive an online reviewer’s credibility to affect herding behaviors. This study will use online questionnaire to collect the related data from online users who have the experience of searching online information before buying product/service. In addition, an individual’s
characteristic is a key factor to affect one’s behavioral performance. This study will consider preference for group further exploring the inconsistent consequences of herding process. The research hopes to provide different insights and managerial implications to consumer herding behavior by analyzing this persuasive process.