The Impact Of Time Elapse Precision In Countdown On Consumer Purchasing Intentions

In the daily business operation,regardless of whether the sales performance are good or not,promotion is often used by major businesses to stimulate consumption as an inportant means.With the introduction and popularization of Internet in people's lives,various ways of online promotion have become a common tool for stimulating consumption on major business platforms.In the mainstream of E-commerce websites,when it is time for promotion,we can see the phenomenon that business promotional activities are corresponded with its time limits.And the way to express time lapse of these restrictions is different from each other.Concrete speaking,the accuracy of time lapse is not the same.Most are measured by day,hour,minute,second,or even millisecond.Of course,this should be the same promotional time.But accuracy to indicate passing of time is not the same.This can not help but wonder whether the business intend to use a different countdown accuracy to subtly influence consumer's purchase decision.Based on some relevant theories and research about time pressure and consumer purchase decision-making,this paper introduces the explanatory mechanism of time pressure on decision-making to analyze this phenomenon.A total of three experiments were designed to explore the impact of time indication accuracy of countdown on consumer purchasing intentions.Experiment 1 is used to verify the existence of main effect which refers to the inpact of time countdown accuracy on consumer's purchase.Experiment 2 replaces experimental material to verify the main effect again,and explores the mediating effect of time pressure(TP).After one pre-study to determine suitable experiment material,experiment 3 is designed to demonstrate the interaction effect between product involvement and time lapse accuracy on consumer's willingness to buy(WTB).The experimental results show that:(1)different accuracy to express time lapse in countdown will produce a significant impact on consumer purchase intention:compared to low accuracy,when accuracy to express time lapse in countdown is high,consumer shows a stronger desire to purchase;(2)different accuracy to express time lapse in countdown will give consumers a different time pressure,and its impact on consumers purchase intention is caused by the intermediary role of time pressure;(3)product involved types and time elapsed precision will have an interact impact on consumer's willingness to buy:Only when consumers buy those highly involved products,will time elapsed precision have a significant impact on their purchasing intention.That means when time precision is low,consumers intended to buy high involved product show a low purchase intention;and when time precision is high,consumers show a higher purchase intention.This study analyzes different effects of time elapsed precision in countdown on high involved products and low involved products,and explores the mediating effect of time pressure.To some extent,it enriches academic studies about time pressure,product involvement,consumer behavior etc.And in marketing practice,this research conclusion points out that through applying a certain time pressure on potential customers,businesses could make a rational use of various expression of countdown to enable consumers to make more impulsive buying behavior,which in turn,will produce a more cost-effective promotional result.