Informational and Normative Social Influence in Buyer Behavior

An experiment was conducted to clarify the nature of the influence active in most prior marketing research on the social influence process. Experimental subjects were exposed to evaluations of coffee which were attributed to either a similar or dissimilar source. These evaluations were high in uniformity, low in uniformity or of unknown uniformity. Subjects then tasted and evaluated the coffee. The subjects' evaluations were made either under a visible (identifiable) condition or an anonymous condition. The data supported a hypothesis of informational social influence.