Is It Slightly Better or Deficient in Comparison?The Effect of Comparative Word of Mouth on Consumers'Variety Seeking
Consumers often encounter comparative word of mouth(WOM)when shopping,such as when consumers initially interested in the Media air conditioning suddenly saw or heard the WOM,'Gere air conditioning is more energy efficient than the Media,it is more worth-while to buy'.In the face of this WOM,consumers,out of the novelty of competing products,may delay the purchase or even give up the pur-chase of the focus product and turn to buy competing products,that is,a different degree of diversification of the search for behavior.Compara-tive WOM can be seen to cause distress to the focal brand,especially in many online situations such as livestreaming and public announcements,which not only generate exposure to the competing product but may also be unfavorable to the evaluation of the focal product,thus shaking the choice of the consumer.In order to reduce the above troubles,focus brands need to understand the psychological changes that create variety seeking in the face of the WOM in order to better retain potential con-sumers.Therefore,it is worth exploring how comparative WOM affects consumers'choices and how focal brand companies should respond to it.In this study,we investigate the effects of two types of comparative WOM(focus product dominance versus competitive product domi-nance)on consumers'variety seeking willingness and explore the mod-erating effects of the brand's feedback way.A short interview with 25 MBA members revealed that consumers have diverse seeking behaviors in the face of comparative word-of-mouth and that judgmental confi-dence and alternative attractiveness are the main psychological influ-ences.Study 2 found by researching 128 consumer choice experiments in food service situations:the alternative attractiveness of competing products positively affects variety seeking willingness,and consumers'confidence in judgement of the focal product negatively affects variety seeking willingness,and the two variables jointly mediate the influence process.Study 3 re-tested these effects through online and offline shop-ping situations of 180 consumers for material products.The results suggest that comparative WOM,both experiential and material,influences consumers'variety-seeking willingness through alternative attractiveness and judgment confidence.Study 4 found that comparative WOM also elicited variety seeking willingness and that the focal brand's feedback moderated this effect.For focus-dominant WOM,the horizontal difference is more effective than the vertical difference in feedback,weakening consumers'alternative attraction to the competitor and boosting their judgement confidence of the focus product,thus in-hibiting their variety seeking,whereas for competitor-dominant WOM,the vertical difference in feedback is more effective in inhibiting con-sumers'variety seeking willingness.Finally,Study 5 adopts an offline behavioral experiment to test the direct effect of comparative WOM on consumer variety seeking behaviors and demonstrates that both types of comparative WOM can influence consumers'variety seeking behaviors to different degrees.This study explores the influence and internal mechanism of prod-uct-dominant and competitor-dominant WOM on consumers'variety seeking willingness and,through empirical analysis,finds that prod-uct-dominant information can also lead to variety seeking behavior,i.e.,as long as it is a comparative WOM message,it can lead to variety seeking among consumers.This finding is more general and completes the theory that comparative WOM is more likely to lead to diversifi-cation-seeking behavior and is not only limited to the daily perception that competitor-favored WOM leads to variety-seeking behavior.This empirical result enriches the research in the subject area of the impact of comparative WOM on consumers.Second,the discovery of this perspective expands the scope of the op-timal stimulus level theory,which mainly proposes other scenarios or motivational factors for consumer variety seeking behaviors based on the optimal stimulus level theory but pays less attention to comparative WOM,a common stimulus,and the fact that focal product-dominant and competitor-dominant WOM are the important stimulus levels at the ends of the inverted U-shape.Meanwhile,the focus product-dominant and competitor-dominant WOM represent the situations where the content of the WOM is consistent and inconsistent with the consumers'expected intentions,and the judgment confidence and alternative attractiveness as mediators can explain the effects of the two situations on the consumers through shallow and deep cognitive paths,which enriches the influence of the dual-process information processing theory in the field of WOM.Finally,few scholars have paid attention to how to give feedback to com-parative WOM in order to inhibit consumers'diversified willingness to seek,but this study concludes that there is a difference in the effective-ness of vertical and horizontal feedback on different comparative WOM through empirical tests,which helps brand merchants to better deal with the impact of comparative WOM and provides new ideas for brand feed-back in WOM.This finding helps brand merchants to better deal with the impact of comparative WOM and also provides new ideas for brand feedback in WOM.In addition,this study concludes the following management insights based on the findings of the study.Firstly,in daily life,merchants tend to pay more attention to the management of competitor-dominant WOM while neglecting the focus on product-dominant WOM,which in fact also makes consumers curious about competing products,thus increasing the possibility of brand conversion.Therefore,brands should guide their fans to focus on the superior attributes of their own products during WOM promotion,especially when promoting in the public lives-treaming room,and try to minimize the mention of competing products to avoid bringing attention to competing products.Second,substitution attractiveness and judgment confidence can also significantly affect consumers'variety seeking willingness,so brands should think about their core competitive advantages when developing and designing prod-ucts,enhance their irreplaceability,and give consumers sufficient brand confidence.Third,the brand should make targeted feedback on compar-ative WOM to retain old fans in time.For the focus product dominant WOM,the horizontal difference feedback method can be used,i.e.,objectively explaining the difference between the focus product and the competing products in the horizontal attributes,so that consumers can perceive the uniqueness of the focus product and make choices accord-ing to their own preferences,and for the competitor dominant WOM,the vertical difference feedback method can be used,i.e.,highlighting their own brand products.Feedback,i.e.,highlighting the more advanta-geous attributes of one's own brand products,weakening the alternative attractiveness of competing products,and thus inhibiting the consumer's variety seeking behavior.
Comparative Word of MouthVariety SeekingDu-al-process Information Processing TheoryVertical DifferencesHorizontal Difference
万方数据
维普
