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Utilitarian or hedonic: Event-related potential evidence of purchase intention bias during online shopping festivals
Journal Pre-proof Utilitarian or hedonic: Event-related potential evidence of purchase intention bias during online shopping festivals Qian Shang, Jia Jin, Junping Qiu
PII:
S0304-3940(19)30768-2
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2019.134665
Reference:
NSL 134665
To appear in:
Neuroscience Letters
Received Date:
17 September 2019
Revised Date:
8 November 2019
Accepted Date:
29 November 2019
Please cite this article as: Shang Q, Jin J, Qiu J, Utilitarian or hedonic: Event-related potential evidence of purchase intention bias during online shopping festivals, Neuroscience Letters (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2019.134665
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Utilitarian or hedonic: Event-related potential evidence of purchase intention bias during online shopping festivals
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Qian Shang 1, Jia Jin 2*, Junping Qiu3*
1 Management School, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China
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2 Business School, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
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3 Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China
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*Correspondence: Prof. Jia Jin
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Business School, Ningbo University 818# Fenghua Road, Ningbo, 315211, China E-mail: [email protected] Tel.: +86-18268658293 Prof. Junping Qiu Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation, Hangzhou Dianzi University 1
1158# Road 2, Hangzhou, 310018, China E-mail: [email protected]
Highlights
Purchase intention bias towards utilitarian than hedonic in online shopping festival. Applying ERPs to explore the cognitive mechanisms of purchase intention bias.
The purchase intention bias was indexed by N2 in early stage of attention
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capture.
4.The purchase intention bias was indexed by LPC in late stage of emotion
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perception.
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Abstract
Online shopping festivals play a significant role in consumers’ purchase decision and have been the focus of much research and many marketing practices. However,
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research has yet to explore which product categories can promote consumer purchase intention during online shopping festivals. This study carried out a neurophysiological
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experiment with event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the mechanism of participants’ purchase intention for two classic product categories (utilitarian products
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(UP) and hedonic products (HP)) during online shopping festivals. The behavioral findings demonstrated that compared to HP, participants had a purchase intention bias towards UP. Neurocognitively, this purchase intention bias was reflected by a larger N2 component and a smaller LPC component for UP than for HP. N2 reflected attentional capture in the early cognitive stage, and LPC reflected the later stage of negative emotional perception. These findings provide a preliminary exploration of the mechanism of people’s purchase decision of UP and HP during online shopping 2
festivals, positively contributing marketing practices and future research. Keywords Online shopping festival; Purchase intention; Utilitarian products; Hedonic products; N2; LPC 1. Introduction With the rapid growth of e-commerce, online shopping festivals have become one of the most popular ways for consumers to buy products [1, 12]. Online shopping
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festivals, created for shopping, are a new marketing strategy paradigm; they promote consumer spending by creating a festival atmosphere and offering great promotional
campaigns, such as Alibaba’s Double 11 and Jindong’s 618 in China [40, 42]. Since the emergence of online shopping festivals, many people have been attracted to actively
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participate in these national shopping festivals, gradually forming shopping habits during such festivals [42].
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During online shopping festivals, consumers are more likely than usual to make buying decisions in an impulsive manner [1, 2, 41]. Given the important role of online
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shopping festivals in consumers’ purchase decision behavior, a stream of research has examined the underlying motivational mechanism. For example, Yan et al. (2016)
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described four typical characteristics of online shopping festivals (i.e., promotion, time pressure, social environment, and store slack) that had a crucial effect on consumers’ unplanned buying and attributed this effect to the stimulus–organism–response model
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and self-regulation theory [41]. Akram et al. (2017) demonstrated that the emotional factors of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use during online shopping
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festivals affect people’s purchase behavior [2]. In addition, the motivational factors of online shopping festivals (hedonic and utilitarian value) were revealed to have a positive influence on consumers’ online purchase [1, 42]. Here, utilitarian value is related to features such as monetary savings, selection, and convenience, while hedonic value is the feature of social interaction and entertainment during online shopping festivals [1, 42]. These studies show that previous researchers were mainly focused on 3
the important role of the characteristics and advantages of online shopping festivals themselves in the purchase decision. However, few studies have examined how product characteristics during online shopping festivals affect consumers’ purchase intention. Marketing investigations have found that not all product categories are popular with consumers. Research has yet to explore which product categories can promote consumers’ purchase intention during online shopping festivals. Products are often categorized based on their utilitarian and hedonic attributes [6, 35, 39], and most products have both utilitarian and hedonic attributes [39]. Utilitarian
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products (UP) are defined as products that primarily provide functional and instrumental value, and consumers mainly focus on their necessity, usefulness and
practicality [10, 18, 40]. In contrast, hedonic products (HP) primarily provide affective
experience, and they are more related to sensation, pleasure and enjoyment [10, 20, 40].
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Researchers have shown that consumers make varied choices regarding UP and HP [39]. A streams of research has indicated that people sometimes place higher value on HP
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than on UP [8, 23, 35]. For example, Okada (2005) found that a HP was rated more highly than a comparable utilitarian alternative when they were evaluated separately
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[23]. When consumers were required to make a choice between the two types of products, they valued hedonic goods more than utilitarian goods [8]. Tong and Su (2018)
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revealed that consumers were more likely to choose a HP (vs. an UP) product when the two types of products were jointly displayed and the HP was placed above the UP [35]. However, another stream of research has demonstrated that consumers prefer UP over
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HP [6, 20, 30, 43]. For instance, Sela et al. (2008) found that participants were more likely to choose UP (e.g., a printer) than to choose HP (e.g., an mp3 player) when they
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were faced with a large set of options, as it was easier to justify the UP [30]. The UP was considered to be more useful and necessary; thus, compared to the HP, it was easier to construct reasons for buying the UP [6]. Spending money on HP was usually regarded as unnecessary, as such products were often viewed as luxuries and, therefore, participants felt negative emotions (e.g. guilty) when buying them [20, 23]. Compared to UP, a stronger level of negative emotions induced by purchasing HP caused 4
consumers to relinquish buying such products [20, 43]. The above studies demonstrate that consumers show different purchase biases towards UP and HP in various situations. In the context of online shopping festivals, a large set of products are launched for promotion, and most of the highly discounted products have time or quota restrictions [40, 41]. Consumers need to make optimal and instant decisions among these various product choices. In this case, we speculate that UP, which are easy for consumers to justify [6, 30], are more likely to attract their attention and induce purchase intention. In contrast, HP, which usually consumes more
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time and energy to choose, might be more likely to induce negative emotions such as anticipatory regret in the case of an instant decision [20, 23, 43]. Therefore, we propose that during online shopping festivals, consumers might have a higher purchase intention to choose UP than to choose HP. To further examine the underlying psychological
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mechanism, we carry out a neuroscientific experiment with event-related potentials
(ERPs) to explore the cognitive activity of purchase intentio during online shopping
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festivals. Following the previous literature on consumer buying decisions, the present study focuses on two important components (N2 and LPC).
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N2 is a negative-going component that generally arises between 200-350 ms after stimulus onset [25, 27, 38]. It has been suggested that N2 is sensitive to attentional
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capture in the cognitive process [17, 25, 27, 33]. Many studies have indicated that a larger N2 amplitude can be evoked by attractive stimuli compared to unattractive stimuli [5, 25]. For instance, Chen et al. (2012) found that an increased negative N2
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deflection was induced by attractive faces compared to unattractive faces, which was interpreted as enhanced attention to attractive faces due to their evolutionary and
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biological significance [5]. When subjects were presented with images of social stimuli (faces and persons) or landscapes, a larger activation of the N2 component in response to social stimuli indicated a greater allocation of attention to biologically attractive information [25]. In recent years, more researchers have begun to examine the attentional mechanism of N2 in consumer preference [14, 34]. For example, Guo et al. (2016) observed that people devoted more attention to preferred products than to 5
nonpreferred products, which was reflected by a larger N2 amplitude in response to preferred products [14]. The study conducted by Thurin et al. (2017) found an enhanced N2 component in response to images of preferred alcohol images compared to images of nonpreferred alcohol, reflecting a positive relationship between attentional capture and preferred products [34]. In the current study, when participants were required to make rapid and instant decisions during online shopping festivals, UP, which were more evolutionarily useful and necessary, might be preferred over HP. We propose that when participants make buying decision during online shopping festivals, the characteristics
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of evolutionary importance and preference in UP will elicit a greater N2 component compared to HP.
LPC, a late positive component, generally reaches its maximum amplitude within
a 400-800 ms time window after stimulus presentation [7, 11]. Many studies have
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demonstrated that LPC is sensitive to emotional stimuli and have suggested that it is a neurophysiological marker of emotional reactivity [5, 15, 16, 22, 28, 29, 31, 32]. For
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example, Ma et al. (2010) found that high hazard words that had strong negative emotion could result in augmented LPC [22]. When participants were presented with
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emotional images, unpleasant and negative images were demonstrated to elicit an enlarged LPC relative to neutral stimuli, which was interpreted as negativity bias in the
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later evaluation stage of emotion processing [15, 28, 32]. Threatening stimuli such as pictures of spiders could also induce larger LPC amplitudes compared to other neutral stimuli [31]. An experiment conducted by Chen et al. (2012) showed that unattractive
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faces evoked a higher LPC amplitude than did attractive faces, which was explained as a negative emotional effect [5]. Based on these studies, LPC can be considered a useful
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indicator for reflecting the perception of negative emotion in the cognitive process. In the present study, when participants make buying decisions during online shopping festivals, if negative emotions are evoked more by HP than by UP, we hypothesize that this negative emotional effect will be reflected by a larger LPC amplitude in response to HP compared to UP. In this study, we applied ERPs technology to explore people’s underlying 6
cognitive mechanisms when making purchase decisions for UP and HP during online shopping festivals. This study examines the following hypotheses: (1) During online shopping festivals, people might have a higher purchase intention to choose UP than to choose HP. (2) Neurocognitively, the purchase bias towards UP might be reflected by larger N2 and smaller LPC components. 2. Methods 2.1 Participants Eighteen undergraduate students (10 females, ages 18-24 years, mean age
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21.44±2.03 years) from Ningbo University were paid to participate in this experiment. They were all healthy and right handed and had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. Before the experiment, all participants read and signed the written informed consent form. Our experiment was approved by the institutional ethics committee of
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the Academy of Neuroeconomics and Neuromanagement at Ningbo University. After
the experiment, one participant’s data were excluded because of excessive signal
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artifacts. Therefore, 17 valid participants (10 females, ages 18-24 years, mean age
2.2 Experimental Stimuli
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21.65±1.91 years) were included in the final data analysis.
Ten well-known online shopping festivals (e.g., Double 11, Double 12, and
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Jindong 618) were chosen as prime stimuli (S1). A pre-test with 7-point scales ranging from 1 (completely no preference) to 7 (completely preference) was used to evaluate the participants’ preferences for the ten online shopping festivals. The data results
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showed that participants had high preferences for these online shopping festivals (M=4.42, SD=0.55). Six types of products selected from the frequent purchase list of
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consumers were used as target stimuli (S2). These products were clothing, shoes, food, camera, telephone and video appliance. The stimuli arrangement of S1 (10 online shopping festivals)-S2 (6 product types) pairs in the experiment were balanced, i.e., each online shopping festival was paired with the 6 types of products respectively. A pretest was conducted to evaluate these product categories in terms of their hedonic and utilitarian attributes. According to the measurement method of previous studies [18], a 7
7-point scale ranging from 1 (utilitarian) to 7 (hedonic) was used to evaluate the product categories. This pretest collected 90 valid data points, and these products were divided into two categories. One category consisted of UP, including clothing, shoes and food, while the other category consisted of HP, including camera, telephone and video appliance. A paired t-test between the HP (M=5.14, S.E. =0.12) and UP (M=3.72, S.E.=0.14) categories was conducted and showed significant differences (t (1,89) = 8.063, p<0.01). Moreover, we used the same scale to have checked participants’ evaluation for these products in terms of hedonic and utilitarian attributes, a significant
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difference (t (16) =8.02, p<0.01) was found between the categories of HP (M=5.13, S.E.=0.24) and UP (M=3.31, S.E.=0.21). A questionnaire with 7-point scales ranging from 1 (completely no preference) to 7 (completely preference) was used to evaluate
people’s preference for these products in daily life. Paired t-test results showed no
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significant preference difference between utilitarian products (M=5.03, SD=0.97) and the hedonic products (M=4.95, SD=1.07) [t (101) =0.73, p>0.05].
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In order to measure the negative emotions (e.g., sad, guilt ) and positive emotions (e.g., happy) induced by the experimental stimuli, a questionnaire with 7-point scales
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ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree) were conducted (e.g., “I feel sad when I spend money to buy a camera in double 11 festival”). Paired t-tests
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showed that the hedonic products (M=4.57, SD=1.71) induced higher negative emotions than the utilitarian products (M=3.11, SD=1.51) (t (101) =8.87, p<0.01). However, the hedonic products induced lower positive emotions (M=3.97, SD=1.46)
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than the utilitarian products (M=4.52, SD=1.49) (t (101) =-3.57, p<0.01). 2.3 Experimental procedures
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In a sound-attenuated room, the participants comfortably sat on a chair in front of
a computer screen that was used to present the experimental stimuli. All stimuli were presented with the professional E-Prime 2.0 software (Psychology Software Tools Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA). There were 60 trials of S1 (online shopping festival)-S2 (product category) pairs. At the beginning of each trial (see Figure 1), a masking stimulus “＋” was displayed in the center of the computer screen for 500 ms. Then, S1 appeared for 8
a duration of 1500 ms and was followed by S2. During the presentation of S2, the participants were required to evaluate their purchase intentions (ratings of 1-7) with a portable keyboard to manipulate the slider on the computer screen. The S2 would not disappear until the participants responded. The interstimulus interval (ISI) varied between 500-700 ms, and the trial interval varied between 800-1000 ms. Following previous research methods [26], during the experiment, the participants were asked to imagine that they were Ms. (Mr.) A in the following scenario who planned to buy some books and had no other planned buying products and to evaluate their
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purchase intentions. The participants were instructed that the presented products had similar levels of price, brand and quality. Ms. (Mr.) A just received a scholarship and planned to buy some books. Today, Ms. (Mr.) A happens to notice some product promotions during an online shopping festival.
Figure 1
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***************************************
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*************************************** 2.4 Electroencephalogram recordings and analysis
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Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were made with a Neuroscan SynAmps 2 Amplifier (Scan 4.5, Neurosoft Labs, Inc., Virginia, USA) and a 64 Ag/AgCl
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electrode cap, using the left mastoid as a reference. The EEG data sampling rate was 500 Hz. During the experiment, the electrode impedance was kept below 5 KΩ, and the horizontal electrooculogram (EOG) and vertical EOG were simultaneously recorded.
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All EEG data were analyzed off-line. The EEG was digitally filtered with a low-pass filter at 30 Hz (24 dB/Octave) and extracted from -200 to 800 ms time-locked to the
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onset of S2, with the prestimulus period as baseline. Ocular artifacts were corrected, and other artifacts with peak-to-peak deflection exceeding± 80 μV were excluded. The average EEG was analyzed separately for the UP and HP conditions. Two ERPs components (N2 and LPC) were elicited by the experimental stimuli in this study. Based on the visual observation of waveforms and previous studies, nine electrodes (FC1, FCZ, FC2, C1, CZ, C2, CP1, CPZ and CP2) were selected to analyze 9
the N2 component (time window: 250-350 ms), and nine electrodes (F1, FZ, F2, FC1, FCZ, FC2, C1, CZ and C2) were selected to analyze the LPC component (time window: 550-750 ms). For the statistical analyses, a two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with a 2 (product category: UP vs. HP) × 9 (electrodes) design was separately conducted for the N2 and LPC components, and the Greenhouse–Geisser correction [13] and Bonferroni correction were applied as needed. 3. Results 3.1 Behavioral data
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3.1.1 Purchase Intention The paired sample t-test of purchase intention demonstrated a significant main
effect of product category, t (16) =3.22, p=0.005. As illustrated in Figure 2, the
participants showed higher purchase intentions for UP (M=4.58, S.E.=0.25) than for HP
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(M=3.25, S.E.=0.25). 3.1.2 Reaction Time
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The paired sample t-test of reaction time revealed no significant difference
(16) =0.234 p=0.818.
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between UP (M=1991.88 ms, S.E.=187.77) and HP (M=1973.12 ms, S.E.=181.84), t
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Figure 2
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3.2 ERPs data
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3.2.1 N2 component
In the ERPs data, the two-way repeated-measure ANOVA of N2 found significant
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main effects of product category, F (1,16) =4.895, p<0.05, η2=0.234, and electrode, F (1,16) =10.537, p<0.01, η2=0.397. However, no significant interaction effect between them was found, F (8,128) =0.304, p>0.05, η2=0.019. As shown in Figure 3, in online shopping festivals, a more negative N2 component was demonstrated for UP (M= 0.143 μV, S.E.=0.74) than for HP (M=1.397 μV, S.E.=0.63). 3.2.2 LPC component 10
For the LPC component, the ANOVA results revealed main effects of product category, F (1,16) =6.285, p<0.05, η2=0.282, and electrode, F (1,16) =2.708, p<0.01, η2=0.145. The participants showed a larger LPC amplitude in the HP condition (M=1.942 μV, S.E.=0.65) than in the UP condition (M=-0.441 μV, S.E.=0.94) (see Figure 3). However, there was no significant interaction effect between product category and electrode, F (8,128) =0.79, p>0.05, η2=0.047. *************************************** Figure 3
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*************************************** 3.3 Correlation analysis
A correlation analysis between behavioral purchase intention (PI), N2 amplitude
and LPC amplitude were conducted. The difference of PI (UP condition minus HP
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condition) and the amplitude of the differentiated LPC (UP condition minus HP condition) are significantly correlated with each other in electrode F1 (r= -0.50, p<0.05)
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and FC1(r=-0.49, p<0.05). The difference of PI and the differentiated N2 amplitude showed no significantly correlation (p>0.05).
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4. Discussion
This study focused on exploring how product category (UP vs. HP) affects
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consumers’ purchase intention during online shopping festivals. The behavioral results revealed that people had a higher purchase intention for UP than for HP when they were required to complete a purchase decision task during an online shopping festival.
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Moreover, the ERPs results showed that this purchase intention bias was reflected by a larger N2 and a smaller LPC component in the UP condition compared to the HP
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condition, revealing the underlying cognitive mechanism of purchase decisions during online shopping festivals. A remarkable purchase intention bias was found: People demonstrated a higher
purchase intention when they were presented with UP in contrast to HP. This discovery can be explained by a self-justifying mechanism [6, 23, 30, 39]. When consumers carry out a shopping activity during online shopping festivals, they need to make purchase 11
decisions efficiently in a short amount of time because there are various product promotions, most of which have time or quota restrictions [40,41]. In this situation, people are more likely to choose a product that is easy to justify as being a good choice. Previous researchers have indicated that UP are often believed to be useful and necessary; thus, it is easy to find reasons to buy them and to justify them as a good choice [6, 10, 30]. In contrast, HP is usually considered luxuries and unnecessary [20, 23]. If a purchase decision turns out to be a bad choice, HP normally results in higher negative emotion compared to UP [6, 23]. Accordingly, it might be difficult and cost
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more energy for people to justify that buying a HP is a good choice. As a result, when performing a purchase decision task during an online shopping festival, people showed a higher likelihood of purchasing UP compared to HP.
According to the ERPs results, we found a purchase intention bias on N2 in the
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250-350 ms time window, with a larger N2 amplitude in the UP condition compared to
the HP condition. As mentioned in the introduction, N2 can be indexed as an indicator
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of attention allocation in the early cognitive process [17, 25, 27, 33]. Many researchers have indicated that a remarkable N2 amplitude is elicited by special stimuli such as
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threatening images or risk perception; this effect has been attributed to an evolutionary perspective, according to which people used to allocate great attentional resources to
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threatening stimuli for survival value [4, 19, 29, 38]. However, recent studies have demonstrated that attractive and preferred stimuli also possess evolutionary importance [5, 14, 25, 34, 36]. Chen et al. (2012) showed that people were more likely to cooperate
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with attractive partners versus unattractive partners in a trust game due to biological and evolutionary significance, showing a larger attentional capture on N2 in the
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attractive faces of fictional partners [5]. Guo et al. (2016) indicated that preferred products could attract people’s interest and induce feelings of pleasure, drawing far more attentional resources and evoking an enhanced N2 amplitude in neural activities [14]. In our study, people were asked to complete a purchase decision task for UP and HP during an online shopping festival. Compared with the HP, which is viewed as luxuries and unnecessary, the UP, which is closely associated with necessity, usefulness 12
and function seemed to be more evolutionarily important. As a result, in the present study, the evolutionary value of the UP led to much more attentional allocation and a greater N2 component compared to the HP. Therefore, by way of explanation, the N2 effect on purchase intention bias in our study might reflect greater attentional capture by UP due to their evolutionary importance. For the later neural activity in the 550-750 ms interval, we found a larger LPC component in the HP condition compared to the UP condition. Numerous studies have shown that LPC is closely associated with the cognitive process of emotional response
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[16, 22, 28, 29, 31]. Negative stimuli could motivate an enlarged LPC amplitude compared to neutral stimuli [5, 15, 32]. Huang et al. (2006) indicated that people were especially sensitive to negative emotional materials, and this emotional negativity bias
could be reflected by a greater LPC in response to negative images compared to positive
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and neutral images [15]. Threatening or unattractive faces also led to an enlarged LPC
amplitude compared to neutral or attractive faces, which was interpreted as a negative
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emotional effect [5, 29]. In this study, HP was treated as luxuries and unnecessary compared to UP; thus, the purchase decisions of these products more easily evoked
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negative emotions [20, 23, 43]. The result of pre-test questionnaire was consistent with this speculation that hedonic products consumption induced higher negative emotions
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than utilitarian products consumption in online shopping festivals. Accordingly, this negative emotional feature of HP resulted in a larger LPC amplitude in the decisionmaking process compared to UP. Therefore, it is suggested that the LPC effect on
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purchase intention bias in our study reflects the anticipatory perception of negative emotions in response to HP.
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With the rapid growth of online shopping in recent years, many researchers and
retailer have focused on online shopping festivals. The current study differs from previous studies on online shopping festivals and makes several major contributions. First, many previous researchers concentrated on the typical characteristics and advantages of online shopping festival themselves [1, 41]. For example, they found that the utilitarian value (i.e., monetary savings, selection, and convenience) and the hedonic 13
value (i.e., social interaction and entertainment) of online shopping festivals positively influenced consumers’ purchase decisions [1, 42]. However, a drawback of these studies was that the characteristics of the products themselves during the online shopping festivals were rarely examined. In the current study, we carried out a study from a new perspective to examine which product categories (UP vs. HP) could effectively promote consumer purchase intention during online shopping festivals. Second, using ERPs measurement, our study explored in depth the underlying neurocognitive mechanism of people’s decision-making process for UP and HP during
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online shopping festivals. We found a purchase intention bias towards UP compared to HP, which was reflected by larger N2 and smaller LPC components for UP during the cognitive process. It is suggested that N2 is related to attentional capture, while LPC is
related to negative emotional processing. To a certain extent, we speculate that the ERPs
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results of this study might reflect the general rules of the neuropsychological processes
underlying consumers’ decision-making behavior in large-scale promotions. A wide
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range of product choices, time pressure and quantity limits are typical features of largescale promotions [40, 41]. To make a beneficial decision rapidly, consumers will
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express their purchase bias towards a product that is easier to justify as early as the neurocognition stage. We suggest that two cognitive stages are involved in the
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processing of purchase bias behavior: the early stage of attentional capture and the later stage of negative emotional perception. The current findings have some practical implications for marketing. Mastering
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which product category promote consumers’ purchase decisions can help marketers to develop more effective marketing strategies. The present study found that consumers
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had higher purchase intentions for the utilitarian products than hedonic products in online shopping festivals. We suggest that marketers can spend more resources on promoting utilitarian products in online shopping festivals to maximize product sales and benefits. Moreover, the utilitarian attributes of products showed higher attention capture and lower negative emotional perception compared to the hedonic attributes of products, which contributed to higher purchase intention. Thus, we recommend that 14
marketers should focus on improving attention capture and reducing negative emotion perception in the marketing strategy of hedonic products. For example, marketers can highlight the product's utilitarian attributes when describing the attributes of a product (even for hedonic products) in online shopping festivals. Our study has some limitations that must be addressed in future research. First, the current study examined product categories based on only their utilitarian and hedonic attributes. Research has shown that there are other ways to classify products, such as product involvement [3, 9], brand familiarity [24], and product luxury [37]. Future
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research should further investigate these factors. Second, our study did not research the influence of individual characteristics. According to previous studies [21], the current
experiment adopted within-subject design that could help eliminate potential influence of individual characteristics. Future research should further investigate the factor of
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individual characteristics. Moreover, the ERPs experiment has inherent limitations related to the experimental design, which could not perfectly simulate a real online
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shopping festival and consumers’ decision-making process, and the interference factors (e.g. stimuli brand, quality, price) may not be completely controlled. Future research
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should adopt more measurements to solve this issue. 5. Conclusion
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In summary, this study carried out an ERPs experiment to examine the mechanism of people’s purchase decision of UP and HP during online shopping festivals. The behavioral findings demonstrated that people had a purchase intention bias towards UP
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compared to HP. Neurocognitively, this purchase intention bias was reflected by a larger N2 component and a smaller LPC component in response to UP compared to HP. N2
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reflected attentional capture, and LPC reflected negative emotional perception. We suggest that the processing of purchase intention bias in the current study involves two cognitive stages: the early stage of attentional capture and the later stage of negative emotional perception. Overall, our study offers a preliminary exploration of the mechanism of people’s purchase intention of UP and HP during online shopping festivals, which provides important implications for marketing practices and future 15
research. Conflict of interest There are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments This work received support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71602044, 71831006, 71603139 and 61806177).
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Figure Legends Figure 1. Illustration of the experimental procedure. Participants were instructed to evaluate their purchase intentions after the presentation of S2. Figure 2. Behavioral results. The purchase intentions for two product categories (Hedonic products and Utilitarian products). ** p<0.01. Figure 3. ERPs results. Grand-averaged ERPs waveforms of N2 and LPC from four
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central electrodes (FZ, FCZ, CZ and CPZ).
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PII:
S0304-3940(19)30768-2
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2019.134665
Reference:
NSL 134665
To appear in:
Neuroscience Letters
Received Date:
17 September 2019
Revised Date:
8 November 2019
Accepted Date:
29 November 2019
Please cite this article as: Shang Q, Jin J, Qiu J, Utilitarian or hedonic: Event-related potential evidence of purchase intention bias during online shopping festivals, Neuroscience Letters (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2019.134665
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. © 2019 Published by Elsevier.
Utilitarian or hedonic: Event-related potential evidence of purchase intention bias during online shopping festivals
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Qian Shang 1, Jia Jin 2*, Junping Qiu3*
1 Management School, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China
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2 Business School, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
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3 Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China
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*Correspondence: Prof. Jia Jin
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Business School, Ningbo University 818# Fenghua Road, Ningbo, 315211, China E-mail: [email protected] Tel.: +86-18268658293 Prof. Junping Qiu Chinese Academy of Science and Education Evaluation, Hangzhou Dianzi University 1
1158# Road 2, Hangzhou, 310018, China E-mail: [email protected]
Highlights
Purchase intention bias towards utilitarian than hedonic in online shopping festival. Applying ERPs to explore the cognitive mechanisms of purchase intention bias.
The purchase intention bias was indexed by N2 in early stage of attention
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capture.
4.The purchase intention bias was indexed by LPC in late stage of emotion
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perception.
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Abstract
Online shopping festivals play a significant role in consumers’ purchase decision and have been the focus of much research and many marketing practices. However,
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research has yet to explore which product categories can promote consumer purchase intention during online shopping festivals. This study carried out a neurophysiological
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experiment with event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the mechanism of participants’ purchase intention for two classic product categories (utilitarian products
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(UP) and hedonic products (HP)) during online shopping festivals. The behavioral findings demonstrated that compared to HP, participants had a purchase intention bias towards UP. Neurocognitively, this purchase intention bias was reflected by a larger N2 component and a smaller LPC component for UP than for HP. N2 reflected attentional capture in the early cognitive stage, and LPC reflected the later stage of negative emotional perception. These findings provide a preliminary exploration of the mechanism of people’s purchase decision of UP and HP during online shopping 2
festivals, positively contributing marketing practices and future research. Keywords Online shopping festival; Purchase intention; Utilitarian products; Hedonic products; N2; LPC 1. Introduction With the rapid growth of e-commerce, online shopping festivals have become one of the most popular ways for consumers to buy products [1, 12]. Online shopping
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festivals, created for shopping, are a new marketing strategy paradigm; they promote consumer spending by creating a festival atmosphere and offering great promotional
campaigns, such as Alibaba’s Double 11 and Jindong’s 618 in China [40, 42]. Since the emergence of online shopping festivals, many people have been attracted to actively
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participate in these national shopping festivals, gradually forming shopping habits during such festivals [42].
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During online shopping festivals, consumers are more likely than usual to make buying decisions in an impulsive manner [1, 2, 41]. Given the important role of online
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shopping festivals in consumers’ purchase decision behavior, a stream of research has examined the underlying motivational mechanism. For example, Yan et al. (2016)
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described four typical characteristics of online shopping festivals (i.e., promotion, time pressure, social environment, and store slack) that had a crucial effect on consumers’ unplanned buying and attributed this effect to the stimulus–organism–response model
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and self-regulation theory [41]. Akram et al. (2017) demonstrated that the emotional factors of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use during online shopping
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festivals affect people’s purchase behavior [2]. In addition, the motivational factors of online shopping festivals (hedonic and utilitarian value) were revealed to have a positive influence on consumers’ online purchase [1, 42]. Here, utilitarian value is related to features such as monetary savings, selection, and convenience, while hedonic value is the feature of social interaction and entertainment during online shopping festivals [1, 42]. These studies show that previous researchers were mainly focused on 3
the important role of the characteristics and advantages of online shopping festivals themselves in the purchase decision. However, few studies have examined how product characteristics during online shopping festivals affect consumers’ purchase intention. Marketing investigations have found that not all product categories are popular with consumers. Research has yet to explore which product categories can promote consumers’ purchase intention during online shopping festivals. Products are often categorized based on their utilitarian and hedonic attributes [6, 35, 39], and most products have both utilitarian and hedonic attributes [39]. Utilitarian
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products (UP) are defined as products that primarily provide functional and instrumental value, and consumers mainly focus on their necessity, usefulness and
practicality [10, 18, 40]. In contrast, hedonic products (HP) primarily provide affective
experience, and they are more related to sensation, pleasure and enjoyment [10, 20, 40].
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Researchers have shown that consumers make varied choices regarding UP and HP [39]. A streams of research has indicated that people sometimes place higher value on HP
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than on UP [8, 23, 35]. For example, Okada (2005) found that a HP was rated more highly than a comparable utilitarian alternative when they were evaluated separately
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[23]. When consumers were required to make a choice between the two types of products, they valued hedonic goods more than utilitarian goods [8]. Tong and Su (2018)
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revealed that consumers were more likely to choose a HP (vs. an UP) product when the two types of products were jointly displayed and the HP was placed above the UP [35]. However, another stream of research has demonstrated that consumers prefer UP over
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HP [6, 20, 30, 43]. For instance, Sela et al. (2008) found that participants were more likely to choose UP (e.g., a printer) than to choose HP (e.g., an mp3 player) when they
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were faced with a large set of options, as it was easier to justify the UP [30]. The UP was considered to be more useful and necessary; thus, compared to the HP, it was easier to construct reasons for buying the UP [6]. Spending money on HP was usually regarded as unnecessary, as such products were often viewed as luxuries and, therefore, participants felt negative emotions (e.g. guilty) when buying them [20, 23]. Compared to UP, a stronger level of negative emotions induced by purchasing HP caused 4
consumers to relinquish buying such products [20, 43]. The above studies demonstrate that consumers show different purchase biases towards UP and HP in various situations. In the context of online shopping festivals, a large set of products are launched for promotion, and most of the highly discounted products have time or quota restrictions [40, 41]. Consumers need to make optimal and instant decisions among these various product choices. In this case, we speculate that UP, which are easy for consumers to justify [6, 30], are more likely to attract their attention and induce purchase intention. In contrast, HP, which usually consumes more
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time and energy to choose, might be more likely to induce negative emotions such as anticipatory regret in the case of an instant decision [20, 23, 43]. Therefore, we propose that during online shopping festivals, consumers might have a higher purchase intention to choose UP than to choose HP. To further examine the underlying psychological
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mechanism, we carry out a neuroscientific experiment with event-related potentials
(ERPs) to explore the cognitive activity of purchase intentio during online shopping
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festivals. Following the previous literature on consumer buying decisions, the present study focuses on two important components (N2 and LPC).
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N2 is a negative-going component that generally arises between 200-350 ms after stimulus onset [25, 27, 38]. It has been suggested that N2 is sensitive to attentional
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capture in the cognitive process [17, 25, 27, 33]. Many studies have indicated that a larger N2 amplitude can be evoked by attractive stimuli compared to unattractive stimuli [5, 25]. For instance, Chen et al. (2012) found that an increased negative N2
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deflection was induced by attractive faces compared to unattractive faces, which was interpreted as enhanced attention to attractive faces due to their evolutionary and
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biological significance [5]. When subjects were presented with images of social stimuli (faces and persons) or landscapes, a larger activation of the N2 component in response to social stimuli indicated a greater allocation of attention to biologically attractive information [25]. In recent years, more researchers have begun to examine the attentional mechanism of N2 in consumer preference [14, 34]. For example, Guo et al. (2016) observed that people devoted more attention to preferred products than to 5
nonpreferred products, which was reflected by a larger N2 amplitude in response to preferred products [14]. The study conducted by Thurin et al. (2017) found an enhanced N2 component in response to images of preferred alcohol images compared to images of nonpreferred alcohol, reflecting a positive relationship between attentional capture and preferred products [34]. In the current study, when participants were required to make rapid and instant decisions during online shopping festivals, UP, which were more evolutionarily useful and necessary, might be preferred over HP. We propose that when participants make buying decision during online shopping festivals, the characteristics
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of evolutionary importance and preference in UP will elicit a greater N2 component compared to HP.
LPC, a late positive component, generally reaches its maximum amplitude within
a 400-800 ms time window after stimulus presentation [7, 11]. Many studies have
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demonstrated that LPC is sensitive to emotional stimuli and have suggested that it is a neurophysiological marker of emotional reactivity [5, 15, 16, 22, 28, 29, 31, 32]. For
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example, Ma et al. (2010) found that high hazard words that had strong negative emotion could result in augmented LPC [22]. When participants were presented with
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emotional images, unpleasant and negative images were demonstrated to elicit an enlarged LPC relative to neutral stimuli, which was interpreted as negativity bias in the
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later evaluation stage of emotion processing [15, 28, 32]. Threatening stimuli such as pictures of spiders could also induce larger LPC amplitudes compared to other neutral stimuli [31]. An experiment conducted by Chen et al. (2012) showed that unattractive
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faces evoked a higher LPC amplitude than did attractive faces, which was explained as a negative emotional effect [5]. Based on these studies, LPC can be considered a useful
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indicator for reflecting the perception of negative emotion in the cognitive process. In the present study, when participants make buying decisions during online shopping festivals, if negative emotions are evoked more by HP than by UP, we hypothesize that this negative emotional effect will be reflected by a larger LPC amplitude in response to HP compared to UP. In this study, we applied ERPs technology to explore people’s underlying 6
cognitive mechanisms when making purchase decisions for UP and HP during online shopping festivals. This study examines the following hypotheses: (1) During online shopping festivals, people might have a higher purchase intention to choose UP than to choose HP. (2) Neurocognitively, the purchase bias towards UP might be reflected by larger N2 and smaller LPC components. 2. Methods 2.1 Participants Eighteen undergraduate students (10 females, ages 18-24 years, mean age
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21.44±2.03 years) from Ningbo University were paid to participate in this experiment. They were all healthy and right handed and had normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity. Before the experiment, all participants read and signed the written informed consent form. Our experiment was approved by the institutional ethics committee of
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the Academy of Neuroeconomics and Neuromanagement at Ningbo University. After
the experiment, one participant’s data were excluded because of excessive signal
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artifacts. Therefore, 17 valid participants (10 females, ages 18-24 years, mean age
2.2 Experimental Stimuli
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21.65±1.91 years) were included in the final data analysis.
Ten well-known online shopping festivals (e.g., Double 11, Double 12, and
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Jindong 618) were chosen as prime stimuli (S1). A pre-test with 7-point scales ranging from 1 (completely no preference) to 7 (completely preference) was used to evaluate the participants’ preferences for the ten online shopping festivals. The data results
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showed that participants had high preferences for these online shopping festivals (M=4.42, SD=0.55). Six types of products selected from the frequent purchase list of
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consumers were used as target stimuli (S2). These products were clothing, shoes, food, camera, telephone and video appliance. The stimuli arrangement of S1 (10 online shopping festivals)-S2 (6 product types) pairs in the experiment were balanced, i.e., each online shopping festival was paired with the 6 types of products respectively. A pretest was conducted to evaluate these product categories in terms of their hedonic and utilitarian attributes. According to the measurement method of previous studies [18], a 7
7-point scale ranging from 1 (utilitarian) to 7 (hedonic) was used to evaluate the product categories. This pretest collected 90 valid data points, and these products were divided into two categories. One category consisted of UP, including clothing, shoes and food, while the other category consisted of HP, including camera, telephone and video appliance. A paired t-test between the HP (M=5.14, S.E. =0.12) and UP (M=3.72, S.E.=0.14) categories was conducted and showed significant differences (t (1,89) = 8.063, p<0.01). Moreover, we used the same scale to have checked participants’ evaluation for these products in terms of hedonic and utilitarian attributes, a significant
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difference (t (16) =8.02, p<0.01) was found between the categories of HP (M=5.13, S.E.=0.24) and UP (M=3.31, S.E.=0.21). A questionnaire with 7-point scales ranging from 1 (completely no preference) to 7 (completely preference) was used to evaluate
people’s preference for these products in daily life. Paired t-test results showed no
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significant preference difference between utilitarian products (M=5.03, SD=0.97) and the hedonic products (M=4.95, SD=1.07) [t (101) =0.73, p>0.05].
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In order to measure the negative emotions (e.g., sad, guilt ) and positive emotions (e.g., happy) induced by the experimental stimuli, a questionnaire with 7-point scales
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ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree) were conducted (e.g., “I feel sad when I spend money to buy a camera in double 11 festival”). Paired t-tests
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showed that the hedonic products (M=4.57, SD=1.71) induced higher negative emotions than the utilitarian products (M=3.11, SD=1.51) (t (101) =8.87, p<0.01). However, the hedonic products induced lower positive emotions (M=3.97, SD=1.46)
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than the utilitarian products (M=4.52, SD=1.49) (t (101) =-3.57, p<0.01). 2.3 Experimental procedures
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In a sound-attenuated room, the participants comfortably sat on a chair in front of
a computer screen that was used to present the experimental stimuli. All stimuli were presented with the professional E-Prime 2.0 software (Psychology Software Tools Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA). There were 60 trials of S1 (online shopping festival)-S2 (product category) pairs. At the beginning of each trial (see Figure 1), a masking stimulus “＋” was displayed in the center of the computer screen for 500 ms. Then, S1 appeared for 8
a duration of 1500 ms and was followed by S2. During the presentation of S2, the participants were required to evaluate their purchase intentions (ratings of 1-7) with a portable keyboard to manipulate the slider on the computer screen. The S2 would not disappear until the participants responded. The interstimulus interval (ISI) varied between 500-700 ms, and the trial interval varied between 800-1000 ms. Following previous research methods [26], during the experiment, the participants were asked to imagine that they were Ms. (Mr.) A in the following scenario who planned to buy some books and had no other planned buying products and to evaluate their
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purchase intentions. The participants were instructed that the presented products had similar levels of price, brand and quality. Ms. (Mr.) A just received a scholarship and planned to buy some books. Today, Ms. (Mr.) A happens to notice some product promotions during an online shopping festival.
Figure 1
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*************************************** 2.4 Electroencephalogram recordings and analysis
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Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings were made with a Neuroscan SynAmps 2 Amplifier (Scan 4.5, Neurosoft Labs, Inc., Virginia, USA) and a 64 Ag/AgCl
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electrode cap, using the left mastoid as a reference. The EEG data sampling rate was 500 Hz. During the experiment, the electrode impedance was kept below 5 KΩ, and the horizontal electrooculogram (EOG) and vertical EOG were simultaneously recorded.
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All EEG data were analyzed off-line. The EEG was digitally filtered with a low-pass filter at 30 Hz (24 dB/Octave) and extracted from -200 to 800 ms time-locked to the
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onset of S2, with the prestimulus period as baseline. Ocular artifacts were corrected, and other artifacts with peak-to-peak deflection exceeding± 80 μV were excluded. The average EEG was analyzed separately for the UP and HP conditions. Two ERPs components (N2 and LPC) were elicited by the experimental stimuli in this study. Based on the visual observation of waveforms and previous studies, nine electrodes (FC1, FCZ, FC2, C1, CZ, C2, CP1, CPZ and CP2) were selected to analyze 9
the N2 component (time window: 250-350 ms), and nine electrodes (F1, FZ, F2, FC1, FCZ, FC2, C1, CZ and C2) were selected to analyze the LPC component (time window: 550-750 ms). For the statistical analyses, a two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with a 2 (product category: UP vs. HP) × 9 (electrodes) design was separately conducted for the N2 and LPC components, and the Greenhouse–Geisser correction [13] and Bonferroni correction were applied as needed. 3. Results 3.1 Behavioral data
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3.1.1 Purchase Intention The paired sample t-test of purchase intention demonstrated a significant main
effect of product category, t (16) =3.22, p=0.005. As illustrated in Figure 2, the
participants showed higher purchase intentions for UP (M=4.58, S.E.=0.25) than for HP
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(M=3.25, S.E.=0.25). 3.1.2 Reaction Time
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The paired sample t-test of reaction time revealed no significant difference
(16) =0.234 p=0.818.
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between UP (M=1991.88 ms, S.E.=187.77) and HP (M=1973.12 ms, S.E.=181.84), t
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Figure 2
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3.2 ERPs data
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3.2.1 N2 component
In the ERPs data, the two-way repeated-measure ANOVA of N2 found significant
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main effects of product category, F (1,16) =4.895, p<0.05, η2=0.234, and electrode, F (1,16) =10.537, p<0.01, η2=0.397. However, no significant interaction effect between them was found, F (8,128) =0.304, p>0.05, η2=0.019. As shown in Figure 3, in online shopping festivals, a more negative N2 component was demonstrated for UP (M= 0.143 μV, S.E.=0.74) than for HP (M=1.397 μV, S.E.=0.63). 3.2.2 LPC component 10
For the LPC component, the ANOVA results revealed main effects of product category, F (1,16) =6.285, p<0.05, η2=0.282, and electrode, F (1,16) =2.708, p<0.01, η2=0.145. The participants showed a larger LPC amplitude in the HP condition (M=1.942 μV, S.E.=0.65) than in the UP condition (M=-0.441 μV, S.E.=0.94) (see Figure 3). However, there was no significant interaction effect between product category and electrode, F (8,128) =0.79, p>0.05, η2=0.047. *************************************** Figure 3
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*************************************** 3.3 Correlation analysis
A correlation analysis between behavioral purchase intention (PI), N2 amplitude
and LPC amplitude were conducted. The difference of PI (UP condition minus HP
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condition) and the amplitude of the differentiated LPC (UP condition minus HP condition) are significantly correlated with each other in electrode F1 (r= -0.50, p<0.05)
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and FC1(r=-0.49, p<0.05). The difference of PI and the differentiated N2 amplitude showed no significantly correlation (p>0.05).
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4. Discussion
This study focused on exploring how product category (UP vs. HP) affects
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consumers’ purchase intention during online shopping festivals. The behavioral results revealed that people had a higher purchase intention for UP than for HP when they were required to complete a purchase decision task during an online shopping festival.
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Moreover, the ERPs results showed that this purchase intention bias was reflected by a larger N2 and a smaller LPC component in the UP condition compared to the HP
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condition, revealing the underlying cognitive mechanism of purchase decisions during online shopping festivals. A remarkable purchase intention bias was found: People demonstrated a higher
purchase intention when they were presented with UP in contrast to HP. This discovery can be explained by a self-justifying mechanism [6, 23, 30, 39]. When consumers carry out a shopping activity during online shopping festivals, they need to make purchase 11
decisions efficiently in a short amount of time because there are various product promotions, most of which have time or quota restrictions [40,41]. In this situation, people are more likely to choose a product that is easy to justify as being a good choice. Previous researchers have indicated that UP are often believed to be useful and necessary; thus, it is easy to find reasons to buy them and to justify them as a good choice [6, 10, 30]. In contrast, HP is usually considered luxuries and unnecessary [20, 23]. If a purchase decision turns out to be a bad choice, HP normally results in higher negative emotion compared to UP [6, 23]. Accordingly, it might be difficult and cost
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more energy for people to justify that buying a HP is a good choice. As a result, when performing a purchase decision task during an online shopping festival, people showed a higher likelihood of purchasing UP compared to HP.
According to the ERPs results, we found a purchase intention bias on N2 in the
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250-350 ms time window, with a larger N2 amplitude in the UP condition compared to
the HP condition. As mentioned in the introduction, N2 can be indexed as an indicator
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of attention allocation in the early cognitive process [17, 25, 27, 33]. Many researchers have indicated that a remarkable N2 amplitude is elicited by special stimuli such as
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threatening images or risk perception; this effect has been attributed to an evolutionary perspective, according to which people used to allocate great attentional resources to
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threatening stimuli for survival value [4, 19, 29, 38]. However, recent studies have demonstrated that attractive and preferred stimuli also possess evolutionary importance [5, 14, 25, 34, 36]. Chen et al. (2012) showed that people were more likely to cooperate
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with attractive partners versus unattractive partners in a trust game due to biological and evolutionary significance, showing a larger attentional capture on N2 in the
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attractive faces of fictional partners [5]. Guo et al. (2016) indicated that preferred products could attract people’s interest and induce feelings of pleasure, drawing far more attentional resources and evoking an enhanced N2 amplitude in neural activities [14]. In our study, people were asked to complete a purchase decision task for UP and HP during an online shopping festival. Compared with the HP, which is viewed as luxuries and unnecessary, the UP, which is closely associated with necessity, usefulness 12
and function seemed to be more evolutionarily important. As a result, in the present study, the evolutionary value of the UP led to much more attentional allocation and a greater N2 component compared to the HP. Therefore, by way of explanation, the N2 effect on purchase intention bias in our study might reflect greater attentional capture by UP due to their evolutionary importance. For the later neural activity in the 550-750 ms interval, we found a larger LPC component in the HP condition compared to the UP condition. Numerous studies have shown that LPC is closely associated with the cognitive process of emotional response
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[16, 22, 28, 29, 31]. Negative stimuli could motivate an enlarged LPC amplitude compared to neutral stimuli [5, 15, 32]. Huang et al. (2006) indicated that people were especially sensitive to negative emotional materials, and this emotional negativity bias
could be reflected by a greater LPC in response to negative images compared to positive
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and neutral images [15]. Threatening or unattractive faces also led to an enlarged LPC
amplitude compared to neutral or attractive faces, which was interpreted as a negative
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emotional effect [5, 29]. In this study, HP was treated as luxuries and unnecessary compared to UP; thus, the purchase decisions of these products more easily evoked
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negative emotions [20, 23, 43]. The result of pre-test questionnaire was consistent with this speculation that hedonic products consumption induced higher negative emotions
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than utilitarian products consumption in online shopping festivals. Accordingly, this negative emotional feature of HP resulted in a larger LPC amplitude in the decisionmaking process compared to UP. Therefore, it is suggested that the LPC effect on
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purchase intention bias in our study reflects the anticipatory perception of negative emotions in response to HP.
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With the rapid growth of online shopping in recent years, many researchers and
retailer have focused on online shopping festivals. The current study differs from previous studies on online shopping festivals and makes several major contributions. First, many previous researchers concentrated on the typical characteristics and advantages of online shopping festival themselves [1, 41]. For example, they found that the utilitarian value (i.e., monetary savings, selection, and convenience) and the hedonic 13
value (i.e., social interaction and entertainment) of online shopping festivals positively influenced consumers’ purchase decisions [1, 42]. However, a drawback of these studies was that the characteristics of the products themselves during the online shopping festivals were rarely examined. In the current study, we carried out a study from a new perspective to examine which product categories (UP vs. HP) could effectively promote consumer purchase intention during online shopping festivals. Second, using ERPs measurement, our study explored in depth the underlying neurocognitive mechanism of people’s decision-making process for UP and HP during
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online shopping festivals. We found a purchase intention bias towards UP compared to HP, which was reflected by larger N2 and smaller LPC components for UP during the cognitive process. It is suggested that N2 is related to attentional capture, while LPC is
related to negative emotional processing. To a certain extent, we speculate that the ERPs
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results of this study might reflect the general rules of the neuropsychological processes
underlying consumers’ decision-making behavior in large-scale promotions. A wide
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range of product choices, time pressure and quantity limits are typical features of largescale promotions [40, 41]. To make a beneficial decision rapidly, consumers will
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express their purchase bias towards a product that is easier to justify as early as the neurocognition stage. We suggest that two cognitive stages are involved in the
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processing of purchase bias behavior: the early stage of attentional capture and the later stage of negative emotional perception. The current findings have some practical implications for marketing. Mastering
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which product category promote consumers’ purchase decisions can help marketers to develop more effective marketing strategies. The present study found that consumers
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had higher purchase intentions for the utilitarian products than hedonic products in online shopping festivals. We suggest that marketers can spend more resources on promoting utilitarian products in online shopping festivals to maximize product sales and benefits. Moreover, the utilitarian attributes of products showed higher attention capture and lower negative emotional perception compared to the hedonic attributes of products, which contributed to higher purchase intention. Thus, we recommend that 14
marketers should focus on improving attention capture and reducing negative emotion perception in the marketing strategy of hedonic products. For example, marketers can highlight the product's utilitarian attributes when describing the attributes of a product (even for hedonic products) in online shopping festivals. Our study has some limitations that must be addressed in future research. First, the current study examined product categories based on only their utilitarian and hedonic attributes. Research has shown that there are other ways to classify products, such as product involvement [3, 9], brand familiarity [24], and product luxury [37]. Future
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research should further investigate these factors. Second, our study did not research the influence of individual characteristics. According to previous studies [21], the current
experiment adopted within-subject design that could help eliminate potential influence of individual characteristics. Future research should further investigate the factor of
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individual characteristics. Moreover, the ERPs experiment has inherent limitations related to the experimental design, which could not perfectly simulate a real online
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shopping festival and consumers’ decision-making process, and the interference factors (e.g. stimuli brand, quality, price) may not be completely controlled. Future research
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should adopt more measurements to solve this issue. 5. Conclusion
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In summary, this study carried out an ERPs experiment to examine the mechanism of people’s purchase decision of UP and HP during online shopping festivals. The behavioral findings demonstrated that people had a purchase intention bias towards UP
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compared to HP. Neurocognitively, this purchase intention bias was reflected by a larger N2 component and a smaller LPC component in response to UP compared to HP. N2
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reflected attentional capture, and LPC reflected negative emotional perception. We suggest that the processing of purchase intention bias in the current study involves two cognitive stages: the early stage of attentional capture and the later stage of negative emotional perception. Overall, our study offers a preliminary exploration of the mechanism of people’s purchase intention of UP and HP during online shopping festivals, which provides important implications for marketing practices and future 15
research. Conflict of interest There are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments This work received support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71602044, 71831006, 71603139 and 61806177).
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Figure Legends Figure 1. Illustration of the experimental procedure. Participants were instructed to evaluate their purchase intentions after the presentation of S2. Figure 2. Behavioral results. The purchase intentions for two product categories (Hedonic products and Utilitarian products). ** p<0.01. Figure 3. ERPs results. Grand-averaged ERPs waveforms of N2 and LPC from four
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central electrodes (FZ, FCZ, CZ and CPZ).
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