产品决策支持工具影响移动消费者购买决策的顺序效应:基于神经科学的视角

The Order Effects of Product Decision Support Tools influencing Mobile Consumers’Purchasing Decisions:A Neuroscience Perspective

由于信息过载和不确定性,移动购物平台经常使用产品排名系统、产品评论系统和产品推荐系统为消费者的购买决策提供支持。那么,这三个决策支持工具在移动购物平台产品页面上出现的先后顺序对消费者购买决策有影响吗?现有文献尚未对此进行深入研究。本文从神经科学的视角设计事件相关电位实验,并对被试的脑电数据进行双因素重复测量方差分析,研究发现:产品决策支持工具的呈现顺序对移动消费者的购买率和决策反应时长有显著影响。而且,先呈现评论系统再呈现推荐系统后呈现排名系统的顺序下,移动消费者的购买率最高。本研究从神经层面解释了产品决策支持工具引发的顺序效应影响移动消费者购买决策的认知加工过程。

With the rapid development of mobile commerce,consumers are more willing to use mobile terminals for online shopping.Due to the limitations of mobile terminals in terms of screen size and processing power,it is difficult for mobile consumers to effectively compare and screen massive products,and they are faced with information overload and uncertainty.To this end,mobile shopping platforms usually use decision support tools to support consumers’purchasing decisions,such as product ranking,product review and product recommendation.Does the order in which three decision support tools appear on the product page of the mobile shopping platform will affect mobile consumers’purchasing decisions?The existing literatures have not thoroughly studied this research question.In fact,relevant literature has found that the order of information presentation has a significant impact on consumers’information processing process,which in turn affects their behavioral decisions.Additionally,existing literatures usually use questionnaires,interviews,econometric models,or behavioral experiments to explore online consumers’behavior,which is difficult to objectively reflect the real psychological process and cognitive mechanism of consumers in the online purchase process,resulting in measurement biases.Based on the perspective of neuroscience,this research conducted an ERP(Event-related potential)experiment to collect objective data of brain activity during the interaction between online consumers and product decision support tools,and then used repeated ANOVA on the EEG data of the subjects.Mobile consumers’perception of different presentation order of product decision support tools is mainly analyzed through their purchase rate,decision response time and cognitive feedback.The results show that the presentation order of product decision support tools has significant impact on the purchase rate and decision response time of mobile consumers.Moreover,the purchase rate was highest when presenting product review first,then presenting product recommendation,and the last presenting product ranking.Furthermore,it can be found from the EEG data that the order effect caused by product decision support tools affects the cognitive processing of mobile consumers,such as attention allocation,cue processing,decision processing and emotional arousal,to change consumers’perception of products with no obvious preference difference,and then affect their purchase intention.The theoretical contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in the following three aspects.First,we found the influence of the order effect caused by the presentation order of different decision support tools on the purchase decision of mobile consumers,enriching the theory of mobile consumers’behavioral decision-making.Second,the paper examines the effects of different presentation order of decision support tools from the perspective of product cues,which expands and improves the cue utilization theory.Moreover,the results provide a neural explanation for the conflicting results presented in the previous literature.Third,this paper uses neuroscience methods to reveal the four-stage neural processing mechanism in the interaction between mobile consumers and decision support tools,not only enriches the research methods of consumer behavioral decision-making,but also expands the research theory on the impact of decision support tools on online consumer behavioral decision-making.The practical implications are mainly reflected in the following two aspects.First,mobile online shopping platforms and online retailers should consider the influence of the presentation order of different decision support tools on consumers’purchase decisions when designing product pages.Second,online retailers could use cognitive neuroscience tools and methods to better understand the decision-making psychology of consumer groups when they gain insight into consumer needs,thus gaining a head start in the fierce market competition.