The Impact Of Power Status And Structural Demand On Consumer Boundary Preferences

Boundaries refers to "the boundary of the consumption environment that keep object and environment separated" (Cutright, 2012). There are variety of boundaries in Consumption environment, such as the ceiling and shelves in the store, product packaging and exteriors, even frame of the background pattern. The set of boundary has important implications for businesses and consumers. Power is often considered to be "the base of human behavior". Power state is the certain situations,that individuals have their own power or the awareness of less power. How the consumers’power state influence their products choice, construct preference, advertising information management, attracts many scholars’ interest. This study which has combined with previous studies introduced the variable "Personal need for structure"to analyze the influence of different power state and the personal need for structure to the consumption boundaries preference.Combining pre-exiting research methods, this study attempted to apply contextual priming and words searching method for providing a clear view of respective effects of power and Personal need for structure on the Consumers’Preference for Consumption Boundaries. 363 sampies of undergraduates of Nanjing normal university and Nanjing university of science and technology ,and 261 sampies of online recruitment were randomly selected for the research,using experiment with 2 (type of high power state, type of low power state)* 2 ( high need for structure, low need for structure) .According 3 experiments ,Concludes are as follows:1. The Power Status will affect participants preference for Simple Consumption Boundaries, Compared with high power-primed people, low power-primed people more like the simple consumption boundaries.Personal need for structure will not affect participants preference for Simple Consumption Boundaries.2. The Power Status will not affect participants preference for multifarious Consumption Boundaries. Personal need for structure will affect participants preference for multifarious Consumption Boundaries, Compared with low personal need for structure people, high personal need for structure people more like the multifarious consumption boundaries.3. The Power Status will not affect participants preference for invisible Consumption Boundaries. Personal need for structure will affect participants preference for invisible Consumption Boundaries, Compared with low personal need for structure people, high personal need for structure people more like the invisible Consumption Boundaries.