ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2017, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (3): 370-382.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2017.00370

• 论文 • 上一篇    下一篇

评论不一致性对消费者的双面影响:产品属性与调节定向的调节

黄敏学1; 王艺婷1; 廖俊云1; 刘茂红2   

  1. (1武汉大学 经济与管理学院 市场营销与旅游管理系, 武汉 430072) (2武汉科技大学 管理学院, 武汉 430081)
  • 收稿日期:2016-07-08 发布日期:2017-03-25 出版日期:2017-03-25
  • 通讯作者: 王艺婷, E-mail: shuisui0430@163.com
  • 基金资助:

    国家自然科学基金(71372127); 国家自然科学基金(71672132); 国家自然科学基金海外及港澳学者合作研究项目(71328203)。

Mixed effects of inconsistent reviews on consumers: The moderating roles of product attributes and regulatory focus

HUANG Minxue1; WANG Yiting1; LIAO Junyun1; LIU Maohong2   

  1. (1 Department of Marketing and Tourism Management, Economics and Management School, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China) (2 Management School, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430081, China)
  • Received:2016-07-08 Online:2017-03-25 Published:2017-03-25
  • Contact: WANG Yiting, E-mail: shuisui0430@163.com

摘要:

以往有研究指出在线评论的不一致性会给企业带来负面影响, 也有研究发现存在正面影响。之所以会存在两种截然相反的结论是因为, 以往研究没有深入分析评论内容, 忽略了造成不一致性的根源所在。通过引入产品属性及消费者调节定向, 力图解释以往两种看似冲突的结论。结果表明:评论不一致性会通过影响消费者对产品的风险和独特性感知进而影响其购买意向; 垂直属性评论(水平属性)不一致性越高, 越会激发消费者的风险感知(独特性感知), 进而降低(提高)购买意向; 并且消费者调节定向对产品属性的调节作用会进一步调节。

关键词: 评论不一致性, 产品属性, 风险感知, 独特性感知, 购买意向, 调节定向

Abstract:

Inconsistency (If product A scores 3, 4, and 4, and product B scores 4, 4, and 4, then product A has higher reviews inconsistency compared to product B) frequently appears in online reviews. But prior research have conflicted findings regarding the effect direction of inconsistency on sales/firms. The reason is that previous studies largely ignored the review content such as product attributes. In fact, product reviews inconsistency are caused by consumers’ different preferences and evaluation on the product attributes. In this paper, the product attributes are classified into vertical and horizontal attributes with the standard of uniform preference. According to the regulatory focus theory, reviews inconsistency of vertical attributes are more likely to trigger consumers’ prevention focus, thus stimulate the risk perception of the product, and reduce their purchase intention; but reviews inconsistency of horizontal attributes are more likely to trigger consumers’ promotion focus, thus stimulate the unique perception of the product, and increase their purchase intention. By introducing product attributes in the inconsistent reviews as a moderator, we tried to unify and explain the previous seemingly conflicting conclusions. To obtain some preliminary insights, we collected 138 restaurants’ group-buying posts and coded them as either vertical attributes or horizontal attributes. The analysis of this secondary data showed that the higher the inconsistency of vertical attribute reviews, the less the product sales; while the higher the inconsistency of horizontal attribute reviews, the more the product sales. Furthermore, we conducted two laboratory experiments to examine our hypothesis. In experiment 1, we used a 2 (reviews inconsistency: low vs. high) × 2 (product attributes: vertical vs. horizontal) between-subjects design. In experiment 2, we used a 2 (reviews inconsistency: low vs. high) × 2 (product attributes: vertical vs. horizontal) × 2 (regulatory focus: prevention vs. promotion) between-subjects design. We recruited 270 graduated students as the subjects (130 in experiment 1 and 140 in experiment 2). Results indicated that reviews inconsistency can stimulate consumers’ perception of risk to reduce their purchase intention, while reviews inconsistency can stimulate consumers’ perception of uniqueness to increase their purchase intention. In addition, the product attributes about reviews play a significant moderating role in the main effects. Namely, for the vertical attribute reviews, the reviews inconsistency are more likely to stimulate consumers’ perception of risk, thereby reducing the purchase intention, and for the horizontal attribute reviews, the reviews inconsistency are more likely to stimulate consumers’ perception of uniqueness, thereby increasing the purchase intention. Finally, the results indicated that the regulatory focus moderates the moderating effect of product attribute reviews. By focusing on different consumer preferences for product attributes, this paper breaks the contradictory conclusions about the impact of reviews inconsistency in previous studies. This study extended the research in the field of consumer word-of-mouth. Regulatory focus theory was introduced to this research, which also extended the externality of this theory. Also, some theoretical and practical contributions were made in the product marketing strategy area.

Key words: reviews inconsistency, product attributes, risk perception, unique perception, purchase intention, regulatory focus