睡眠缺乏影响外观可爱产品偏好的现象、机制和边界条件研究

A Study on the Mechanism of How Consumers’Lack of Sleep Influences Their Preference for Visually Cute Products and the Boundary Conditions of the Influence

关于睡眠缺乏如何影响个体的消费行为,营销学界并未对此深入探讨。由于睡眠缺乏会降低消费者的活力,而可爱产品和活力、年轻等密切相关,因此本文探讨了睡眠缺乏对可爱产品偏好的影响机制。通过测量消费者相对短期的睡眠状态以及操纵消费者前一晚的睡眠状态,本文开展了2个问卷调查研究和2个实验研究,发现,相比于睡眠充足,睡眠缺乏的消费者会增加对外观可爱产品的偏好(研究1)。本文进一步发现,睡眠状态对外观可爱产品偏好的影响受到消费者的内隐自我观的调节。具体而言,对于实体论者,睡眠缺乏会增加他们对外观可爱产品的偏好,通过产品提升活力的信念是内在中介;而对于渐进论者,睡眠充足与睡眠缺乏不会影响他们对外观可爱产品的偏好,因为产品提升活力的信念不发挥中介作用(研究2a和研究2b)。本文的研究3进一步通过测量睡眠状态不同的消费者在实际接触外观可爱产品后的活力恢复情况。理论层面,本文对睡眠这一概念在营销领域中的运用以及对可爱产品偏好的前因研究都进行了理论推进。实践层面,本文对外观可爱产品生产者、零售商和营销者的产品人群定位和营销策略提供了有益启示。

People often lack adequate sleep.Marketing scholars have long neglected the issue of how consumers’lack of sleep affects their consuming behavior.Lack of sleep decreases consumers’vitality,and cute products are closely related to vitality and youth.This paper conducts four studies(2 surveys and 2 experiments)to explore the influence of consumers’lack of sleep on their preference for visually cute products,its mechanism and boundary conditions.Study1 finds that sleep-deprived consumers prefer visually cute products.Furthermore,study 2a and study 2b find that the influence is moderated by consumers’implicit self-views.When suffering lack of sleep,substantialistic consumers tend to choose cute products because they strongly believe that such products can help enhance their vitality,but this tendency does not apply to gradualistic consumers,who do not believe so.Study 3 finds that cute products restore consumers’vitality level after they touch cute products.The current paper makes several important theoretical advances.First,this paper adds to the existing researches on sleep,via showing that individuals’preference for baby-schema cute products is a new way for them to cope with the threat of inadequate sleep.Second,through focusing on individuals’physiological and psychological predictors of cute product preferences,this paper moves forwards past researches on cuteness.Practically,this paper has reference value for the market positioning and advertising of enterprises that sell cute products.