Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Temporal Landmark On Consumers’ Product Attribute Preferences

In the face of a rapidly changing market,enterprises keep differentiating their new products to gain competitive advantage and consumer satisfaction.With the rapid development of the Internet,more and more companies begin to realize the importance of content marketing by adopting content marketing into the promotion of products to provide consumers with the right product information at the proper time or right place.Consumers have various needs at different times.Therefore,understanding how different attributes affect customers’ decision-making of new products at different times will generate maximum advertising benefits.As one of the most important environmental variables in shopping life,time plays a vital role in consumers perception and behavior.Temporal landmarks refer to points in time that stands out starkly on calendars.This research aims to explore the impact of starting temporal landmark that signals the start of a period as well as the ending temporal landmark that signals the end of a period.Advertisements often include starting and ending temporal landmark.From the phone advertisement "shooting more clearly in the day while shooting more brightly at night" to the car advertisement hiding sunrise and night,consumers may enter different situation and have different attribute preferences by activating starting or ending temporal landmark.In order to meet consumers demands and attract more consumers,enterprises will promote products by emphasizing different attributes,so as to improve purchasing intention.How to differentiate new products to match different times is an important question to be solved.There is still lack of research about the influence of temporal landmarks on consumers’product attribute preferences.Therefore,this research has important theoretical and practical implications.Based on consideration of realistic problems in the marketing and analysis of existing literature,this research discusses the influence of temporal landmarks on consumers’ product attribute preferences and its psychological mechanism and boundary conditions.Supported by the theory of construal level theory,self-efficacy,future self-continuity and the conditions of spatial distance,temporal distance and social distance,this research provides empirical research on the impact of temporal landmarks(starting temporal landmark or ending temporal landmark)on consumers’product attributes(alignable attributes vs.nonalignable attributes,moral attributes vs.functional attributes,vertical attributes vs.horizontal attributes)preferences.Nine experiments and one field experiment were designed to test hypotheses from three studies.Results of study one indicate that consumers who activate the starting temporal landmark(vs.ending temporal landmark)will evaluate an option with superior nonalignable(vs.alignable)attributes more favorably,and investigate the mediating role of self-efficacy and the moderating role of spatial distance.Results of study two indicate that consumers who activate the starting temporal landmark(vs.ending temporal landmark)will evaluate an option with superior ethical(vs.functional)attributes more favorably,and investigate the mediating role of future self-continuity and the moderating role of temporal distance.Results of study three indicate that consumers who activate the starting temporal landmark(vs.ending temporal landmark)will evaluate an option with superior vertical(vs.horizontal)attributes more favorably,and investigate the mediating role of ego-depletion and the moderating role of social distance.This research has important innovations compared with prior research.Previous research examined the effect of temporal landmark on individual’s perception and behavior.In contrast to prior research,the current research tests the impact of temporal landmark in consumption settings.This research explores consumers’product attribute preferences from the perspective of environmental cues,providing a new research direction for product attributes.Thus,this research enriches premise research on temporal landmarks and product attributes.This study proposed the influence of temporal landmarks on consumers’ attributes preferences,including alignable attributes and nonalignable attributes,ethical and functional attributes,vertical and horizontal attributes,thus expanding the perspective of consumers’comparative decision-making.Previous studies focused on the single product type,such as high-arousal products,nostalgic products and risky products when discussing the effect of temporal landmark,and the research on consumers’comparative decision-making is far from enough.Based on starting temporal landmark and ending temporal landmark,this research investigates the matching degree of temporal landmark and product attribute information(alignable and nonalignable attributes,ethical and functional attributes,vertical and horizontal attributes)systematically.Furthermore,this research reveals the psychological mechanism of consumers’ decision-making under the influence of temporal landmark.In previous research,two mechanisms were put forward to explain the temporal effect,including psychological resource and self-evaluation,which have not discussed consumer’s different psychological perceptions and their influence on product attribute preferences.The present research builds on previous research by proposing internal mechanism of self-efficacy,future self-continuity,ego-depletion perceptions,thus providing internal psychological mechanisms for future research.Supported by the theory of construal level theory,this research examines the impact of temporal landmarks on consumers’product attribute preferences from the conditions of spatial distance,temporal distance and social distance,expanding the research breadth and depth of temporal landmark.This research enriches research findings of temporal landmark and product attribute,and provides practical suggestions for enterprises to develop a differentiated marketing strategies for product attributes.