在线商品的选择过载效应及调节定向作用研究

Online choice overload effect and the moderating role of consumer regulatory focus

在线商品浏览购买转化率是平台商最为看重的指标.为此,在线商家非常重视规划选择商品、优化选择体验、促进选择决策、防止选择过载效应.在线商品选择过载效应是市场营销与电子商务领域重要的研究问题.研究一通过行为学实验与仿真方法,研究了选择集特征导致选择过载效应变化的规律;研究二通过行为学实验,研究了消费者调节定向在其中的作用.研究发现:1)在线商品选择集的理想程度与选项数目改变所导致的选择过载效应变化规律.在线选择集增多选项时,会在非理想选择集中产生选择过载效应,造成选择难度变大、选择放弃意愿上升、选择放弃概率提高;相对理想选择集的选择过载效应不明显;2)消费者调节定向在在线选择过载效应发生过程中具有调节效应.将选择过载效应的研究拓展到线上可以指导在线商家针对商品集的特征与消费者特性制定营销策略,降低选择过载效应,提高浏览购买转化率.

Owing to the importance of purchase conversion, online retailers put much emphasis on planning merchandizing to enhance consumer experience, promote consumer choice, and avoid choice overload. Online choice overload is thus an essential topic in the research areas of marketing and e-commerce. Using a behavioral experiment and a simulation, the paper firstly examines how choice overload changes with the desirability and size of online choice sets. Secondly, an additional experiment is conducted to investigate the moderating role of consumer regulatory focus. Our findings suggest that increasing the size of undesirable online choice sets results in significantly greater choice difficulty and choice deferral while no such effect exists in desirable online choice sets. In addition, consumer regulatory focus moderates online choice overload effect. Our paper extends the choice overload literature by shifting its focus beyond offline shopping to online scenarios, and thus provides managerial implications for online retailers designing marketing strategies to reduce choice overload and enhance purchase conversion.