移动购物更快吗?决策场景与思维模式的相容性

Does mobile shopping make fast decisions? The role of contextual factors and thinking style

既有文献对消费者延迟选择影响因素的研究,主要集中于决策复杂度、决策者特质或情绪,少有对决策场景进行深入探讨。互联网购物时代,PC端与手机端已成为重要的消费场景。针对手机端是否会加快消费者决策过程的问题目前也存在不一致的结论。本文引入决策双系统理论,力图解释以往看似冲突的结论。消费者的购买决策模式,不仅会受到决策任务(产品价格)的影响,还会受到决策场景(购买终端)影响。当场景与决策任务使消费者启动的思维模式相一致时,会提升决策流畅度,降低延迟选择。本文发现,移动端(PC端)与低(高)价格产品更容易激发相容的经验性(理性)思维,降低延迟选择倾向。反之,则会同时启动两种相左的决策思维,增加延迟选择倾向。本文从场景启动与价格启动视角,将以往消费者单一的决策思维模式,拓展到多因素启动的思维模式相容性问题;同时本文通过探究延迟选择问题,对价格策略与场景化营销带来启示。

Previous studies have proposed that firms attempt to reduce online shopping choice deferral, which may lead consumers to abandon or drop their shopping carts before making their final purchase. Moreover, given their mobility and tactile effects, the use of mobile devices can make consumers more emotional compared with the use of desktop computers, thereby triggering a decision-making process. However, the results of some surveys reject such case and instead reveal that the decision-making process of consumers is influenced by the interaction between contextual factors and product attributes. In this paper, these contextual factors were classified into mobile devices and personal computers, while product attributes were classified into low price and high price. Inspired by dual-process theory, we supposed that high (low) price might evoke the rational (experiential) thinking styles of consumers and that mobile devices (personal computers) could trigger their experiential (rational) thinking styles. When these thinking styles are triggered by price and device types, the online choice deferral of these consumers will be reduced. We performed two studies to verify these hypotheses. In Study 1, we collected 3, 674 order data from the Tmall online shopping platform for around two months with the cooperation of a wine company based in China. The threshold regression analysis of secondary data showed that the shopping terminal (mobile phones and personal computers) had no main effect on online shopping choice deferral. However, these results highlighted a significant interaction between product price and device type. As predicted in hypothesis 1, the results indicate that online consumers have significantly more choice deferral for a low-price product when shopping using their personal computers than their mobile phones. Meanwhile, these consumers have significantly more choice deferral for high-price products when shopping using their mobile phones than their personal computers. We also conducted a laboratory experiment to test our hypotheses and verified the mediating effect of thinking style by bootstrapping. We recruited 138 participants in Study 2. Our 2 (device type: mobile phone vs. personal computer)× 2 (price level: low vs. high) between-subject design showed that these participants had significantly lower tendency of choice deferral for low-price products when using mobile phones than when using personal computers. On the contrary, these participants showed a significantly lower tendency of choice deferral for high-price products when using personal computers than when using mobile phones. The mediating effect of thinking style was also verified. The results suggest that online shopping choice deferral is affected not only by product attributes (such as price level in this paper) but also by specific situations (such as device type in this paper). High-(low-)priced products may evoke the rational (experiential) thinking styles of these consumers, while mobile devices (personal computers) can trigger their experiential (rational) thinking styles. When the thinking style is triggered by the product price and device, the online choice deferral of these consumers can be reduced. On the contrary, triggering these two thinking styles at the same time can increase their online shopping choice deferral. The theoretical contributions of this research are as follows. First, this study offers a deeper understanding of the consumer shopping scenario by showing that different types of devices can trigger different thinking styles, thereby extending the current perspectives toward mobile shopping. Second, this study enriches the previous research on choice deferral by exploring the situational effect on the decision-making process. Third, this study extends the current understanding of the experiential and rational thinking styles by examining the relationship between these two styles, thereby contributing to dual-process theory. The findings of this study can also help companies improve their scenario-based target marketing.