避开比较会更好卖?评价模式对消费者酒店选择决策的影响研究

Does Avoiding Comparison Help Promote Sales? A Study on the Impact of Evaluation Mode on Consumers' Hotel Options

在市场竞争中,品牌处于劣势的产品总是试图避开与知名品牌产品的直接竞争。对于存在着大量非品牌产品的酒店业,这种策略的有效性是酒店营销者所关心的重要问题。本文通过3个实验比较了不同销售方式下消费者酒店预订时品牌敏感度与选择决策的变化,验证了这一策略的实际效果,并从消费者行为角度对其内在机理进行解析。综合实验结果得出以下研究结论:(1)相比于共同评价模式,单独评价模式下消费者对酒店品牌的敏感程度更高,相应的选择品牌酒店的概率更高、选择非品牌酒店的概率更低,也就是说对于非品牌酒店,避开比较不但不会卖得更好,反而会更差;(2)酒店预订中,消费者经验对品牌敏感与决策的影响是有条件的,只有消费者能够获知价格范围信息时,经验才能作为内在参照点发挥与外在参照点等同的作用;(3)酒店等级具有明显的调节作用,评价模式只能影响消费者对于产品功能性价值的判断,当面对象征性价值占主导的高档酒店时,评价模式的影响机制与消费者的价值追求再难契合,其影响作用将不再显著。上述结论为酒店营销者提供了营销建议。

On a competitive market,producers of products of underdog brands usually attempt to avoid direct competition with that of well-known brands as a typical marketing strategy. The effectiveness of such strategies highly concerns marketers in hotel business in which a large amount of underdog brands exist. This study made three experiments to compare brand sensitivity and changes of selection decisions of consumers＇ hotel booking behavior in three different marketing modes,verified the real effect of this strategy, and analyzed the inner mechanism from consumers ＇ behavior perspective. With the results,the authors concluded that：（ 1） consumers demonstrate higher brand sensitivity under separate evaluation,and are more likely to choose famous brand than underdog brand.This suggests that avoiding comparison is not a successful strategy for underdog brands;（ 2） consumer experience only has limited influence on brand sensitivity and decision-making. Experience as an internal reference point,plays a same role as any external reference point only when consumers are able to obtain information concerning the full range of prices;（ 3） The hotel type significantly moderate the influence of evaluation mode on consumer preferences. Evaluation mode can only influence consumers＇ evaluation of product quality for budget hotels while it has insignificant impact on consumers ＇preferences for luxury hotels with a dominating symbolic value. In accordance with the above findings,the authors provided hotel marketers with marketing suggestions.