穷家富路?非惯常环境下消费者价格感知研究

The Impact of Unusual Environmental Differences on Price Perception from the Perspective of Construal Level Theory

对消费者购买行为的解释和预测需要建立在购买情境的基础之上。非惯常环境的差异性往往使得消费者的购买行为区别于日常生活中的消费习惯和规律。尽管现实中的非惯常环境购买行为(如旅游消费)非常普遍且增长势头迅猛,相应的学术研究却十分匮乏,尤其是非惯常环境刺激下消费者购买行为的心理作用机制研究还未被深入探究与验证。该文从解释水平理论的视角切入,通过两个研究实验,探讨非惯常环境的差异性在消费者对旅游纪念品价格信息感知倾向和价格敏感度方面的影响,并进一步探究了消费者感知变化产生的内部心理机制,即解释水平在其中的中介作用。研究发现,消费者感知到的非惯常环境与日常居住地的差异越大,其将价格信息感知为货币付出的倾向越弱,进而使得其价格敏感度也随之减弱;而个体的解释水平在非惯常环境差异性对消费者价格感知的影响过程中起到中介作用,且与人文氛围差异相比,地域景观差异更易激发起解释水平的变化。

The interpretation and prediction of consumer’s purchase behavior should build on the foundation of specific purchasing situation.Unusual environment for us is relatively strange,novel,and will not stay for a long time,the particularity of the environment will often cause changes in consumer attitude and behavior.What are the reasons for these behavior changes?Through an extensive literature research,we found that there was still a lack of research that could answer the above question.However,in real life,purchasing behaviors in unusual environment(such as tourism consumption,etc.)are very common and showing an increasing trend:vacation travel,business travel,overseas study visit,and even one-day trip to a theme park,all of which are purchases in unusual environment.Only by understanding and mastering the laws of psychological changes of consumers in this special situation can it be possible to better explain and predict their purchasing behaviors,thus providing valuable reference basis for tourist destinations to guide,manage and regulate the consumption behaviors of tourists.This paper introduces the‘construal level theory’into the research model to further analyze and verify the impact of unusual environmental differences on consumers’perceptions of price information and try to explore the internal psychological mechanism.Two experiment studies were conducted.The purpose of study 1 is to validate the main effect(H1 and H2),which is consumers in an unusual environment are more likely to regard price information as a clue of quality information rather than monetary payment when they perceive a large degree of environmental difference,thus showing a lower price sensitivity.Study 1 was designed as a single-factor intergroup experiment with“big perceptual difference”vs.“small perceptual difference”.81 college students(including 28 male students)from a university in Tianjin,China participated in the experiment and were randomly assigned to two experimental groups.On the basis of study 1,we conducted a follow-up experiment(study 2)through online survey.It expanded the sample size and included control variables.The purpose of study 2 is to verify H3,H4 and H5,that is,consumers’construal level will be stimulated and increased by the influence of the different perceptions of unusual environment,and it plays a mediating role in the influence of perceived unusual environmental differences on the change of consumer price perception.In the second study,experimental questionnaires were distributed and collected through professional data collection platform.A total of 512 questionnaires were collected and finally 438 valid responses were used for data analysis.The research founds that when there is a larger perceived environmental difference,a high-level construal is activated which makes people prefer not to see price information as a kind of monetary sacrifice,but an indicator of quality.In this case consumers would be with a low price sensitivity as well.Oppositely,when the perceived environmental differences are small,people tend to initiate a low-level construal and are more likely to perceive the information of price as the sacrifice of money,which leads to a high price sensitivity.In addition,the results further revealed that perceived difference of landscape has a bigger influence on consumers’price perception than perceived difference of cultural atmosphere.