购买可行性与网络评论信息一致性对产品评价的影响

Impact of Purchase Feasibility and Types of On-line Reviews on Product Evaluation

消费者往往选择性加工与其内在心理倾向一致的信息。本研究通过三个实验考察了购买可行性和网络评论信息在解释水平上的一致性对消费者产品评价的影响。实验一、实验二选取三种体验式产品,检验不同类型评论信息对购买可行性高和低的消费者产品评价的影响是否存在差异。实验三检验消费者与评论者间的社会距离是否会调节购买可行性和评论信息类型间的匹配作用。结果表明,购买可行性高的消费者对产品的评价更易受体现工具性利益网络评论信息的影响,购买可行性低的消费者对产品的评价更易受体现认同性利益网络评论信息的影响,而社会距离会调节上述效应。

Internet provides consumers with opportunities to access online consumer reviews which play an im- portant role in influencing consumers＇ attitude and purchase behavior. Different factors may affect consumers＇ re- sponses to different types of online reviews. In this paper, we distinguished two types of online reviews： identity benefits and instrumental benefits, and focused on the congruency between the purchase feasibility and types of on- line reviews, and examined how two types of online reviews would have different impact on consumers＇ product eval- uation when their purchase feasibility were low and high. According to Construal Level Theory, distal psychological distance, low purchase feasibility, and reviews re- ferring to identity benefits are represented at high construal level; whereas proximal psychological distance, high purchase feasibility, and reviews referring to instrumental benefits are represented at low construal level. Therefore, consumers whose purchase feasibility were low were assumed to be more influenced by reviews referring to identity benefits; whereas consumers whose purchase feasibility were high were assumed to be more influenced by reviews referring to instrumental benefits. In addition, social distance between consumer and reviewer（ interpersonal simi- larity） was assumed to mediate this effect. Three experiments were conducted to test these hypotheses. Experiment 1 a, l b, and 1 c studied services provided by hotel, restaurant, and KTV respectively. Each ex- periment adopted a 2 （ between-group： high vs. low purchase feasibility） ~ 2 （ in-group： reviews referring to identity vs. instrumental benefits）mixed design. The results from ANOVA showed that main effects of both 2 factors were not significant ; whereas the interactions between the 2 factors were significant. The results indicated that when pur- chase feasibility were low, participants were more persuaded by reviews referring to identity benefits than reviews referring to instrumental benefits; when purchase feasibility were high, in contrast, participants were more persua- ded by reviews referring to instrumental benefits than reviews referring to identity benefits. Experiment 2a, 2b, and 2c adopted same materials and designs to confirm the results in experiment 1. How- ever, we varied the way of controlling purchase feasibility. The results of experiment 2 were similar to that of exper- iment 1. The main effects were not significant; and the interactions were significant. Experiment 3 adopted a 2（ high vs. low purchase feasibility） x 2 （reviews referring to identity vs. instrumental benefits） x 2 （far vs. close social distance）between-subjects design. We manipulated social distance by telling the participants who were in far social distance that the reviewer was a retired person aged 65 （ different to partici- pants）, and the participants who were in close social distance were told that the reviewer was an undergraduate student aged 22 （similar to participants）. The results from MANOVA show that the main effect of each factor was not significant. But the interaction between three factors was significant; the interaction between reviews and pur- chase feasibility was significant in both far and close social distance conditions. More specifically, in the far social distance condition, consumers whose purchase feasibility were low were more influenced by reviews referring to identity benefits, whereas the impact of two types of online reviews on consumers whose purchase feasibility were high were was not significantly different. In the close social distance condition, were more influenced by reviews referring to instrumental benefits, consumers whose purchase feasibility whereas the impact of two types of on- line reviews on consumers whose purchase feasibility were low was not significantly different. Taken together, the results from the three experiments supported the hypotheses that reviews referring to identi- ty benefits were more influential on consumers whose purchase feasibility were low; reviews referring to instrumental benefits were more influential on consumers whose purchase feasibility were high, and the social distance between consumer and reviewer should mediate this effect. Our findings not only have meaningful contribution to the litera- ture on how online reviews influence consumer attitude and choice, but also have important managerial implica- tions. Finally, the directions for future study were discussed.