Materialism And Online Impulsive Buying:the Moderating Effects Of Mental Simulation

Impulsive buying is a typical irrational consuming behavior,and it has potential negative effect on individuals and society.With the rapid development of China's economy,the popularity of credit cards and the development of online shopping,the online impulsive buying is becoming increasingly widespread.At the same time,materialism has become a common phenomenon,with more and more Chinese regard pursuing materials as the first important thing,especially Chinese youths.Although a large number of studies have shown that impulsive buying was closely related to the materialistic values of consumers,there is a lack of systematic and in-depth research on its causality and intervention strategies.Based on the realistic background of materialism and online impulsive buying prevailing in China,this paper takes the college students as research subjects,and aims to examine the causal relationship between materialism and online impulsive buying,and then explores the intervention effect of mental simulation on materialists' online impulsive buying by combining the methods of laboratory experiments and field simulation experiments.The conclusion of this project will provide scientific evidence for relevant management strategies of guiding the college consumers to consume rationally.To explore the causal relationship between materialism and online impulsive buying,we designed a single-factor two-level design with 86 subjects,and used an imagined paradigm to prime the materialism of the subjects,and measured the impulsive buying of commodity categories and commodity grades respectively.It was found that compared with the control group,subjects under materialistic conditions had higher levels of online impulse buying.Study 2 adopted 2(materialism:higher and lower)X 3(mental simulation:process simulation,upward outcome simulation,and downward outcome simulation)between-subjects design to further explore the moderating effects of mental simulation between materialism and online impulsive buying of commodity categories by manipulating mental simulation,measuring the online impulsive buying of commodity categories,and finally measuring the materialism of the subjects.205 subjects were randomly arranged into three treatment groups,priming them with process simulation,upward outcome simulation and downward outcome simulation.The results showed that the main effects of materialism and mental simulation were significant,and the interaction between materialism and mental simulation was significant.The results of simple effect analysis showed that under the process simulation condition,the difference of online impulsive buying of commodity categories between the high and low materialism group was not significant;under the upward outcome simulation condition,the online impulsive buying of commodity categories of the low materialists was significantly lower than that of the high;under the downward outcome simulation condition,the impulsive buying of commodity categories of higher materialists was significantly lower than the lower.Based on study 2,study 3 tried to repeatedly validate the moderating effects of mental simulation between materialism and online impulsive buying by using different measures of dependent variables.A total of 204 college students were recruited for the experiment.The experimental procedure was the same as study 2.The only difference was that study 3 measured the online impulsive buying of commodity grades.The results were the same as study 2.The results of simple effect analysis showed that under the process simulation condition,the online impulsive buying of commodity grades of higher materialist was significantly lower than the lower;under the upward outcome simulation condition,the online impulsive buying of commodity grades of the low materialists was significantly lower than that of the high;under the downward outcome simulation condition,the impulsive buying of commodity grades of higher materialists was significantly lower than the lower.This paper used three studies to explore the relationship between materialism and online impulsive buying from the perspective of mental simulation.It had certain reference value for guiding college consumers to consume rationally.