The Influence Of The Mere Presence Of Others On Choice Deferral

Previous studies have shown that many factors can influence consumers' choice deferral,but the impact of external environmental factors on consumers' choice deferral has not been deeply involved.On the other hand,the mere presence of others without any interaction has been proved to have a significant impact on consumer behavior and decision-making.Therefore,this study explores the relationship between the mere presence of others and consumers' choice deferral in the decision-making context,and validates the possible mechanism and regulatory factors.In this paper,three hypotheses are verified by three experiments.In Experiment 1,the mere presence of others is manipulated through contextual imagination as the independent variable.Through the participants' performance in the purchase decision-making task,it was found that the proportion of the participants with the mere presence of others to defer choice was significantly lower than those without the presence of others.Thus hypothesis 1 has been proved,with or without the mere presence of others can significantly affect the consumer's choice deferral.In Experiment 2,the material of experiment 1 was slightly modified,and on this basis,the measurement of the impression management tendency was added.The result of the experiment showed that the effect of impression management was significant as a mediator.Therefore,the hypothesis 2 was verified that the impression management plays an intermediary role in the influence of the mere presence of others on consumers' choice deferral.On the basis of experiment 2,a course selection task with a lower degree of decision importance was added in experiment 3.The results showed that there was an interaction between the mere presence of others and the decision importance.When the decision importance was higher,the gap of the proportion of participants to defer choice between the group with the mere presence of others and the group without the mere presence of others was significantly reduced.Thus hypothesis 3 was also verified.The decision importance will moderate the effect of the mere presence of others on the consumers'choice deferral.When the decision importance increases,the main effect will be weakened.