负面社会推理对消费者购买行为的影响

The Impact of Negative Social Inference on Consumer Purchasing Behavior

负面社会推理通常给企业或品牌带来负面影响,如"腐败""拜金"等社会推理之于奢侈品。本文旨在探讨以下问题:当品牌遭遇来自外界的负面社会推理时,何种消费者的态度将受到更大的冲击——是该品牌的"粉丝"还是普通消费者?为什么?品牌如何利用这一心理机制化解危机?本文通过四个控制实验与企业真实销售数据发现:负面社会推理更有可能降低高偏好消费者("粉丝")和高社会规范遵从度消费者的购买意愿,因为他们对社会推理给自己带来的负面影响思考更多。而品牌或企业可以通过推出低品牌炫耀度的产品来缓冲这一危机。该研究结论不仅对深化和拓展社会推理、炫耀性消费等理论的结构体系和边界条件有重要的理论意义,而且对企业如何应对负面社会推理、保留核心客户群体,消费者如何调和自身偏好与社会推理之间的矛盾有着重要的实践意义。

For many great products in the market,although consumers have favorable evaluations of their objective quality,they decide not to purchase them due to the negative social inference associated with these products.Much research has shown this impact of negative social inference on purchase intention.Building upon this line of research,we proposed that this negative impact would be stronger with consumers who have a higher(vs.lower)preference towards these products.This is because the stronger consumers’preference is towards these products,the stronger their connection is with the product or brand,and therefore,the more likely they will elaborate upon the negative social inference.Moreover,we proposed that this negative impact would be stronger with consumers who are norm believers(vs.non-believers).Lastly,we proposed that negative social inference not only decreases purchase intention for a particular product,it can also produce a change of product choice.That is,consumers will be more likely to purchase products that are less conspicuous(e.g.,with a small logo)to mitigate the impact of negative social inference.Four controlled experiments and one secondary dataset(sales data from 2007 to 2016 from a luxury car company)offered support for these hypotheses.This research adds to past literature on social inference by systematically testing how the impact of negative social inference on purchase intention is moderated by factors associated with consumers’preference and believes.Moreover,this research contributes to past research on social inference and conspicuous consumption by showing that negative social inference can even increase consumers’choice of less conspicuous products.These findings offer important managerial implications for companies encountering negative social inference,such that these companies should focus on consumers who have a higher preference towards their products and tailor their products in a way that these products become less conspicuous in the eyes of high preference consumers.