Abstract: Research suggests that negative online word-of-mouth (negative O-WOM) has positive and negative effects on consumers’ impulsive purchasing intentions. This paper intends to explain the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of negative OWOM, and explore, with psychological experiments, its influence mechanism on consumers’ impulsive purchasing intentions as well as the mediating effects of personal brand connection and impulsive purchasing characteristics. In this paper, a two-path model of negative O-WOM affecting impulsive purchasing intentions is constructed to test the proposed hypotheses through experiments of between-groups variables. The paper finds out that high-intensity negative emotions are positively correlated with impulsive purchasing intentions, while low-intensity negative emotions are negatively correlated with impulsive purchasing intentions, and that impulsive purchasing characteristics merely mediate the impact of high-intensity negative emotions on impulsive purchasing intentions. When consumers with a strong-degree personal brand connection receive negative O-WOM, which conflicts with their original cognition, they will have high-intensity negative emotions and the emotions will be reinforced as negative O-WOM increases. Accordingly, consumers’ impulsive purchasing intentions are aroused owing to the psychology of "being protective of one’s own child (here as brand)". When consumers with weak-degree personal brand connection receive negative O-WOM, they will respond to the existing information. The more the negative O-WOM is, the stronger the low-intensity negative emotions will be, and their impulse purchasing intentions will be inhibited. It is suggested that enterprises achieve effective management of online consumers through enhancement of the relationship between their brands and consumers, different countermeasures to negative O-WOM management based on the degrees of personal brand connection, and effective management of consumers’ negative emotions.

Key words: negative O-WOM, impulse purchasing intentions, negative emotions, impulse purchasing characteristics