Does Price Matter? How Price Influences Online Consumer Decision-Making

PurposeWith the growth of online shopping, during which consumers are not able to touch products, there is much for researchers and marketers to learn about the underlying role of the need for touch (NFT) in driving online shopping decisions. Consumers' emotional state prior to purchase is considered a situational variable that affects their attitude and behaviour. This study explores the effects of consumers' NFT and pre-purchase emotional states on their online decision-making behaviour, examining perceived quality, confidence in product judgment and intention to purchase.Design/methodology/approachA field experiment was conducted using a scenario presenting buying a sweater as a real purchase opportunity available to participants. A convenience sample of two hundred ninety-eight university students at a university in the southeast of France was used in this study. A 2 (NFT: high/low determined by a median split) × 2 (emotional states: high/low level) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to further examine the interaction of NFT and emotional states in consumer decision making.FindingsThe results indicate that autotelic NFT and positive emotional states experienced before shopping have an impact on consumers' decisions in relation to perceived quality, confidence in product judgment and intention to purchase. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that instrumental vs autotelic NFT affects consumer decision making, with mixed support found for negative emotional states acting as possible moderators.Originality/valueThis study advances the NFT field and leads to insights regarding online consumer purchase decision making by exploring instrumental vs autotelic NFT and pre-purchase emotional states as antecedents of consumer decisions.

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Transforming Consumer Decision Making in E-Commerce

Advances in E-Business Research - Transforming E-Business Practices and Applications ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-910-6.ch005 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 72-88 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Naveen Gudigantala ◽

Jaeki Song ◽

Donald R. Jones

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Decision Support ◽

Consumer Preferences ◽

Decision Quality ◽

Consumer Decision Making ◽

Consumer Decision ◽

Decision Strategies ◽

Web Based ◽

Online Consumer ◽

Levels Of Support

To facilitate online consumer decision making, a number of e-commerce businesses are augmenting their Web site features. The Web-based decision support for consumers is often provided by eliciting consumer preferences directly or indirectly to generate a set of product recommendations. The software that captures consumer preferences and provides recommendations is called a Web-based decision support system (WebDSS). It is important for WebDSS to support consumers’ decision strategies. These decision strategies could be compensatory or non-compensatory in nature. Based on a synthesis of previous research, the authors argue that compensatory based WebDSS are perceived by consumers to be better than non-compensatory WebDSS in terms of decision quality, satisfaction, effort, and confidence. This chapter presents a study that examined the level of online support provided to the consumers’ execution of compensatory and non-compensatory strategies. The results based on investigating 375 e-commerce websites indicate that moderate levels of support exists for consumers to implement non-compensatory choice strategies, and virtually no support exists for executing multi-attribute based compensatory choice strategies. The results of this study suggest that there is an opportunity in waiting for e-commerce businesses to implement compensatory WebDSS to improve the decision making capabilities of their consumers.

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Shopping for Privacy Online: Consumer Decision-making Strategies and the Emerging Market for Information Privacy

10.31228/osf.io/3mjh6 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

James Nehf

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Consumer Choice ◽

Personal Information ◽

Emerging Market ◽

Information Privacy ◽

Consumer Information ◽

Consumer Decision Making ◽

Consumer Decision ◽

Database Privacy ◽

Online Consumer

James P. Nehf, Shopping for Privacy Online: Consumer Decision-making Strategies and the Emerging Market for Information Privacy, 2005 Ill. J. L. Tech. & Pol'y 1Studies show that individuals are concerned about database privacy, yet they seldom make privacy a salient attribute when deciding among competing alternatives. Although privacy policies are present on many websites, web users rarely bother to read them. This paper explores why this is so. The author identifies rational reasons why web users do not shop for privacy and discusses the implications for the expanding market for consumer information. He concludes that unless privacy becomes a salient attribute influencing consumer choice, website operators will continue to obtain and use more personal information than web users would choose to provide in a more transparent exchange.

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