熟人还是陌生人,消费者为谁而改变?——不同类型的他人在场对消费者多样化寻求行为的影响

Acquaintances or Strangers,Whom Will Consumers Change Their Behavior for?The Effect of Different Social Presences on Consumer Variety-seeking Behavior

追求丰富的生活、不断寻求刺激和新奇的东西是人类与生俱来的本能和天性,由此产生的消费者多样化寻求行为正日益成为推动社会生产和产品创新的重要动力。笔者基于印象管理和解释水平理论,构建了他人在场情境下消费者多样化寻求行为的理论框架,采用心理实验的方法,探讨了不同类型的他人在场对消费者多样化寻求行为的影响机制。研究结果表明,消费者对他人的多样化寻求行为给予积极正面的评价;相比熟人在场,陌生人在场时消费者会采取更多的多样化寻求行为。进一步的研究还发现,不同自我建构类型的消费者受到他人在场的影响而产生的多样化寻求行为有显著的差异。研究结论不仅从社会学和心理学的视角对本领域研究进行了理论拓展,并且对企业的品牌战略、目标客户选择和销售环境设计策略提供了管理借鉴。

Pursuing a rich life and seeking novelty is the inherent instinct of human beings,which results that consumer variety-seeking behavior is increasingly becoming an important driving force for social production and product innovation.Based on impression management theory and construal level theory,this paper constructed a research framework of consumer variety-seeking behavior from the perspective of psychological distance.We used psychological experiments to explore the mechanism of how the different types of social presences influence consumer variety-seeking behavior.The results showed that consumers gave positive evaluation to other's variety-seeking behaviors;compared to the presence of acquaintances,consumers taken more variety-seeking behavior when strangers are present.Furthermore,this paper found that consumers with different self-construal were influenced differently by social presence and showed significantly different variety seeking behavior.The conclusions not only expand the existing research in this field from the perspective of sociology and psychology,but also provide managerial implication for brand strategy,target customer selection,and sales environment design in marketing.