不同类型参照产品比较和选择的研究

Study on Consumer Comparison and Choice of Different Reference Products

消费者选择和偏好往往是参照依赖的,即受参照产品或对比产品的影响,但消费者采用哪些产品作为参照对象通常是不可观察的。在不同的情境下,消费者采用的参照产品也可能有所不同。本研究提出的离散选择模型分别考虑了不同类型的外部参照产品(即当前选择集中最偏好的产品、最不偏好的产品和平均产品)以及内部参照产品对消费者选择的影响。通过基于选择的联合分析(choice-based conjoint analysis)收集了消费者对智能手机的选择数据,并采用极大似然估计法对不同离散选择模型的参数进行了估计。研究结果表明,消费者选择决策中确实存在着显著的参照效应或比较效应,并且消费者更多地采用选择集中最偏好的产品作为参照产品。当采用最偏好产品作为参照产品时,消费者在非价格属性上的参照效应更为显著,在价格属性上的参照效应不显著。

Extensive research demonstrates that reference products can systematically influence consumer preference and choice.However,consumers'utilization of different reference products is usually not observable.In their decision-making process,consumers may use different reference products and the utilization of reference products can be quite distinct under different contexts.In this paper,four discrete choice models are proposed to incorporate three types of external reference products(i.e.,the most preferred product,the least preferred product,and the middle product in the current choice set)and a potential internal reference product,respectively.A choice-based conjoint experiment is conducted to collect consumer choices for smartphones,which are used to calibrate the models.The parameters of different models are estimated with maximum likelihood estimation method(MLE).The research results indicate that the reference effect or comparison effect does exist in consumer choice and that consumers are more likely to use the most preferred product(in the current choice set)as their reference product.When the most preferred product serves as the reference product,there is significant comparison effect for non-price attributes while the comparison effect for price is not significant.