基于情绪信任的店铺环境线索与再惠顾行为关系研究

The Research on Relationship between Store Environmental Cues,Consumer Trust and Purchase Behavior

信任是影响顾客忠诚的关键变量之一。社会学及脑神经学等领域已经发现了认知加工和情绪反映两条信任的形成路径,但情绪信任在营销研究中一直被普遍忽略。本研究确认了消费者认知信任与情绪信任的形成基础和形成过程,并通过实验法检验了二者对消费者态度和行为的影响作用。结果表明,店铺的内部线索或者外部线索有一方表现良好,即可带来认知信任,而只有二者均较好时,才能带来情绪信任。情绪信任是认知信任影响消费者购买心理与行为的桥梁。本研究有助于零售商通过控制店铺环境线索来获得顾客的认知信任和情绪信任,进而获得顾客的持续惠顾。

Based on the previous research, familiarity based on repeated patronage is closely related to trust. However, trust is still possible to form even though consumers are not familiar with stores at all. For example, it is very common that consumers could quickly make a decision about the trustworthiness immediately after entering a store. Therefore, the interesting question we are attempting to address is what the difference is between the trust based on familiarity and the trust without any prior experience from the perspectives of their antecedents and conse- quences. To clarify the differences between the two types of trust aforementioned, we introduce ＂emotional trust＂ to capture the trust without any past experience, and use ＂cognitive trust＂ to describe the trust based on former knowledge. Cognitive trust is defined as consumers＇ expectation that stores are dependable and can provide services as promised, while emotional trust is formed when consumers feel safe and comfortable during the course of shopping, and believe that it is less likely they will be deceived. In addition, we conceptually differ emotional trust from affec- tive trust, which was universally considered as a close construct to affective trust. Specifically, affective trust is es- sentially a type of cognitive trust because it is formed based on the calculation of affect. In other words, affective trust is a kind of high-level cognitive trust, and it commonly exists in close relationship between trustees and trus- tors. To lucidly delineate the formation mechanism of emotional trust and cognitive trust, we try to dig out how stores＇ physical cues influence two types of trust differently. Specially, we manipulated intrinsic cues （ e. g. , price, prod- ucts） and extrinsic cues （e. g. , atmosphere, location, and promotion） to see whether emotions trust and cognitive trust have vagaries as cues vary. Additionally, we used a follow-up experiment to reveal how cognitive trust and emo- tional trust influence consumers＇ intention and behavior, respectively. The results of the two experiments conceptually uncover the differences between emotional trust and cognitive trust as they have resounding different antecedents and consequences. The first experiment showed that products, prices, atmosphere, location and promotion can directly influence consumers＇ emotional trust, and, in contrast, cogni- tive trust is directly influenced by products and promotion, and indirectly influenced by prices, atmosphere, and lo- cation. Moreover,the second experiment showed that cognitive trust influences repatronage intention rather than re- patronage behavior, but emotional trust influences both repatronage intention and repatronage behavior. In addition, emotional trust mediates the relationship between cognitive trust and repatronage intention. Since emotional trust and cognitive trust have different antecedents and outcomes, we can conclude that emotional trust and cognitive trust dif- fer from each other conceptually, and need to be studied separately and warily. The findings of the research indicate that emotional trust is a crucial component of consumers＇ trust, and it is imperative to punctuate emotional trust when investigating consumers＇ trust. Emotional trust requires both favorable intrinsic cues and excellent extrinsic cues, and plays a more important role than cognitive trust in gaining consumers＇ repatronage behavior. Consequently, stores cannot ignore either intrinsic or extrinsic cues if they want to maintain consumers＇ loyalty. Even though we tried to design a delicate experiment to tease out the influence of brands on consumers＇ trust, intention and behavior, the confounding influence of the products brand still exist, and tends to bias the subjects＇ re- sponses. In addition, we did not control some related variables such as physical costs, and time cost that potentially influence consumers＇ shopping decision. The limitations aforementioned straightjacket the external validity of the re- search findings. Future research can take into account other factors such as brand, and place the experiment in real shopping context to improve the research validity, and further disentangle the relationship between cognitive trust and emotional trust.