The Research On Online Participation Intention And Subsequent Behavior Of Customers In The Context Of Reward Participation Program

In the context of the increasing popularity of mobile Internet and intelligent terminals,it is not easy for customers to get discounts(rewards).Customers may need to complete the tasks set by the enterprise to get the corresponding discount.For example,customers may need to forward the circle of friends,or even invite several friends to buy together.Then,in order to get a certain reward,more and more customers participate in online reward participation plans in a variety of forms,such as paying attention to the public number,forwarding the circle of friends and sharing “bargain” information.Although some scholars have also carried out relevant researches,most of them focus on a single customer online participation behavior(such as discussing the willingness to share in the circle of friends or the willingness to comment online),lacking in unified definition and systematic research on the above-mentioned customer online participation behavior.Based on the current situation and theories of customer online participation,this paper defines such online participation behavior as: customers obtain rewards by participating in tasks required by online merchants through their own efforts,such as online comments,following merchants’ official accounts,forwarding friends circle and collecting likes.At the same time,this paper puts forward that different from the traditional preferential access model “Consumers can get coupons as soon as they arrive at the store”,today’s online participation behavior need customers invest a certain amount of time and energy to get preferential(reward),resulting in two problems: on the one hand,customers’ anticipation and measure of perceived benefits and perceived cost to decide whether to participate in the enterprise online rewards to participate in activities;On the other hand,the time and energy invested in the online participation process will affect the emotion and behavior of customers after the participation.Based on this,this paper investigates the online participation behavior of customers through two major studies,mainly including the following questions: How does the prediction and measurement of perceived cost and perceived benefit affect customers’ online participation willingness during online participation? How do different online engagement behaviors affect the time and energy invested by customers,and how does this investment difference affect the subsequent emotions and behaviors of customers?This paper systematically discusses the customer participation behavior through two parts.Based on the social exchange theory,part one systematically discusses the influence of online participation channels(E-WOM publishing platforms),online participation modes and online participation atmosphere on customers online participation intention,solve what channels,ways,and atmosphere for customers to participate in the corporate incentive program.Meanwhile,part two focuses on the changes of customers’ emotions and behaviors after online participation.From the perspective of psychological ownership,this study explores the influence of different online participation modes on participants’ psychological ownership,expected regret and follow-up behavior(coupon use intention and actual use behavior).Although some scholars have conducted related research on customer online participation willingness,they mostly focus on a single customer online participation behavior,and the research content is mostly focused on the impact of the content of incentive participation plans and the influence of customers’ own characteristics on the possibility of participation.In order to make up for the shortage of the existing research,we propose that online participation channels(network publishing platform),online participation modes and online participation atmosphere are important roles in customer participation process.The research results firstly show that the first-party online publishing platform brings lower perceived social cost,higher perceived value and higher online positive intention than the third-party online platform.However,consumers’ self-consciousness plays a moderating role in influencing consumers’ responses to different online publishing platforms.For consumers with public self-consciousness,the difference of publishing platforms on consumers disappears.Second,through exploring the relationship of online participation modes and customers online participation willingness with eye gaze effect,results show that non-anonymous online participation mode leads to longer print advertising fixation time and higher fixation frequency than anonymous online participation mode.At the same time,the non-anonymous online participation mode compared with anonymous online participation mode enabled consumers to gaze at brand information more times than reward information,but there was no significant difference in gaze time.As for anonymous online participation mode,customers have stronger participation intention.For low brand strength,customers are more inclined to participate in anonymous online participation activities,while for high brand strength,there is no significant participation intention difference between two online ways.Finally,through the investigation of the relationship between the online participation atmosphere and the customer’s online participation intention,the research shows that the number of participants influences the online participation intention of customers by influencing their perceived social cost.When individuals perceive a high(low)number of participants in interpersonal relationships,they will have a low(high)social cost perception,increasing(decreasing)willingness to participate online.However,this kind of influence relation is moderated by the self-construction.For self-dependent consumers,the above influence relationship is valid.However,for independent consumers,the number of participants has no significant difference on the impact of consumers’ perceived social cost and online participation intention.At the same time,research also shows that festival atmosphere brings higher perceived psychological benefits and online participation intention,and influences customers’ online participation intention by influencing their perceived psychological benefits.At the same time,deal proneness moderates the relationship between the perceived psychological benefits and the online participation intention.For those with high deal proneness,the above influence relation is valid.However,for those with low deal proneness,festival atmosphere has no significant difference on the impact of consumers’ perceived social cost and online participation intention.In part two,based on the perspective of psychological ownership,this research explores how to issue coupons makes consumers value and use the coupons they obtained through four studies.Study 1 and study 2 show that participatory promotions lead to higher psychological ownership,expected regret and consumer willingness to use coupons than general promotions.On the one hand,the higher the degree of customer participation,the greater the sense of psychological ownership of the coupons and willingness to use them.On the other hand,the more customers participate,the higher the expected regret of not using the coupons,and therefore the greater the likelihood of using them.Study 3 shows that,among the promotions that require customer participation to obtain coupons,non-anonymous(vs.anonymous)participatory promotions are associated with more willingness to use coupons due to the mediation path effect of psychological ownership.Meanwhile,the three studies show that,when coupons are scarce,the method of issuing coupons based on consumers’ willingness to use them has no effect.This may be because the scarcity of the coupons increases their value,and thus the intention to use them is unaffected by the method of issuance.Finally,to acquire ecological validity to our results,we partner with a restaurant to conduct study 4 to measure real behaviors.The results show that the actual number of coupons used decreases from high to low in the order of non-anonymous participatory promotions,anonymous participatory promotions and general promotions,which is consistent with our conclusions of studies 1-3.Our conclusions provide theoretical and managerial implications in the context of the increasing popularity of mobile internet and intelligent terminals.Compared with the traditional way to get discounts at the store,customers need to invest time and energy to complete the task before they can get the discount(reward).Based on this feature,this paper investigates the customer’s online participation behavior through two major studies.The first part study mainly investigated the influence of different online participation factors on customers’ online participation intention and boundary conditions.The second part study mainly investigated the subsequent changes of customers’ online participation emotion and behavior.The research conclusions of this paper improve the literature research on enterprise incentive participation plan and customer participation.At the same time,under the background of the increasing popularity of mobile Internet and intelligent terminals,the research conclusions of this paper provide a theoretical basis and guiding significance for enterprises to develop more efficient marketing activities.