The Influence Mechanism Of Mental Simulation On Online Consumer Impulse Buying

As the advent of the "Internet +",online shopping scene enriches gradually.The means of payment has been increasingly convenient and almost all consumers have the experience of impulse buying.Therefore,as a most common buying behavior,impulse buying has become a significant issue since the 1850s.Scholars who paid attention to impulse buying at first mainly focus on the external factors that cause consumer impulse buying behavior,such as the package and display of the product.Since then,scholars have gradually added affective and cognitive factors to the research of the consumer impulse buying to distinguish impulse buying behaviors from similar forms of purchase,such as unplanned purchases and compulsive purchases.Furthermore,scholars studied the impact of the psychological process of consumers on impulse buying from the perspective of psychology.Now we can agree that the balance between the desire of consumers and the willpower which keep the consumers away will have a significant impact on the final buying behavior.Some scholars have found that mental simulation will affect the balance between desire and willpower,which will affect impulse buying.But they did not answer how mental simulation affect the balance between desire and willpower,and the mechanism between mental simulation and consumer impulse buying is still a blank,which makes the relationship between mental simulation and impulse buying become a "black box".In our research,we will focus on the mechanism between mental simulation and impulse buying.At the same time,since consumers are more likely to generate impulse buying on the online condition,the eCommerce sellers will significantly improve their sales if they could increase the possibility of consumer impulse buying.But,since the circumstance of the eCommerce has been far from the physical stores,the eCommerce sellers now still rely on external stimulations.But there is still a blank of how to induce consumers to buy by manipulating the decision-making process of consumers.Our research will do something on it.In this paper,we talk about the mediating effect of decision comfort on mental simulation and impulse purchase and the relationship between time distance and regulatory focus tendency in three experiments.Before the experiments,we put forward the hypothesis after a review of the mental simulation,impulse buying,time distance and regulatory focus.Secondly,we designed and implemented three sets of experiments to verify the hypothesis.The experiment one was divided into three groups of experiments.The decision comfort and impulse buying of the subjects were measured in the process simulation,no simulation and outcome simulation in order to find the mediation of decision comfort between mental simulation and impulse buying.Experiment two has carried on the experimental design on mental simulation(process simulation VS no simulation VS outcome simulation)x time distance(far VS near)to study the moderation of time distance on the relationship between simulation and decision comfort.Experiment three carries out experimental design on mental simulation(process simulation VS no simulation VS outcome simulation)x regulatory focus(promote focus VS defense focus)to study the moderation of regulatory focus on the relationship between mental simulation and decision comfort.The results show that:first of all,decision comfort is a partial mediator between mental simulation and impulse buying.Compared with no simulation,the impulse buying is weakened by reducing the decision comfort of the consumers in the process simulation.Similarly,outcome simulation improve impulse buying by enhancing the decision comfort.Secondly,compared with the individual of promote focus,the individual of defense focus is less comfortable after the process simulation,while the individual of promote focus is more comfortable after the outcome simulation compared with the individual of defense focus.In addition,the moderation of time distance on the relationship between mental simulation and decision comfort is not significant.The research enriched the theorys about the impulse purchase and decision-making comfort.