Paper Title
Do Friends’ Product Recommendations Moderate the Influence of Hedonic and Utilitarian Values on Online Purchase Intent and Behavior?

Abstract
The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of consumers’ buying philosophies on online product purchase intentions and product purchases. The research question investigated by the study is “to what degree do Hedonic and Utilitarian values moderated by Friends’ Recommendations impact (1) Intent to Purchase Products Online and (2) Consumer’s Online Purchase Behavior”.The specific variables that are investigated in this research include (1) Utilitarian purchase values as measured by online purchase usefulness, convenience, and value and Hedonic purchase values as measured by consumer purchase pleasure, fun, and satisfaction, (2) Behavioral intention as the influence that beliefs and attitudes have on a person’s probability of performing a behavior, and (3) Online consumer purchase as measured by whether a respondent has purchased products online or not. These variables were measured in the following manner: (1) The Intent to Purchase Products Online was measured using a single element Likert scale, (2) Hedonic and Utilitarian values were measured using multi-dimensional Likert scales comprising three dimensions each, and product purchase was measured using a 1 or 0 that indicated whether respondents purchased or hadnot purchased products online. Keywords - New Product Purchase Intention; Hedonic Values; Utilitarian Values; Online Product Purchase