A Study Of The Relationship Between The Usage Of Cognitive Deixis And Customers’ Purchase Intention

It has been argued that the use of cognitive deixis can not only bring readers with great reading experiences,but also assist readers in shifting from the actual world to the text world,which benefits them with a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of main ideas and sentiments of texts.Previous studies on cognitive deixis,however,mainly focused on analyses of literary texts.There have been few studies that have explored the use of cognitive deixis in daily languages.But actually,the use of cognitive deixis in daily languages has important pragmatic functions,one of which is that it could have an impact on customers’ purchase intention.The present study uses SPSS and semi-structured interviews as research tools and it employs online reviews from Amazon Mall’s online selling as data and priming diagrams to explore customers’ purchase intention,which aims to explore the relationships between uses of cognitive deixis and customers’ purchase intention.It addresses the following three questions:(1)What are the relationships between uses of cognitive deixis and customers’ purchase intention?(2)Do valances of online reviews affect pragmatic functions of cognitive deixis on customers’ purchase intention?(3)Do product types affect pragmatic functions of cognitive deixis on customers’ purchase intention?There are three steps in the present study.Subjects are 102 undergraduate students from Business School of Edinburgh University.Data are 100 pieces of true online reviews obtained from Amazon mall’s online selling,among which there are25 pieces of positive online reviews and 25 negative online reviews for Nike sports shoes.And the same goes for i-Phones.And SPSS 20.is employed for data analyses,experiments of which contain single sample T-tests,correlation analyses and paired sample T-tests.And semi-structured interviews are also employed for exploring subjects’ opinions on impacts of cognitive deixis on customers’ purchase intention.The first step is to conduct single sample T-tests to purchase intention of every piece of online review after subjects have finished reading them,the data of which are conducted correlation analyses with the number of each type of cognitive deixis and the sum of cognitive deixis in that piece of online review.And it takes a preliminary step to verify that there are correlated interrelationships between cognitive deixis in online reviews and customers’ purchase intention.And one piece of online review with a large amount of cognitive deixis is chosen from positive and negative online reviews of Nike sports shoes and i-Phone respectively.And then cognitive deixis in them is completely deleted to get the revised versions.Then paired sample T-tests between customers’ purchase intention of unadapted versions and adapted versions are conducted to further check whether it is cognitive deixis instead of other factors that can impact customers’ purchase intention.The second step is to conduct semi-structured interviews.Deletions of one type of cognitive deixis are conducted each time for the chosen online reviews.And then subjects are required to read unadapted versions and adapted versions.And then the author interviews subjects through ZOOM Online Meeting,during which the author inquires whether their purchase intention is changed after adaptations.And the author also inquires subjects why such alterations of purchase intention are formed and further explores pragmatic functions which each type of cognitive deixis performs.The third step is to conduct Paired sample T-tests for the purposes of testing whether valances of online reviews and product types could impact pragmatic functions of cognitive deixis on customers’ purchase intention.The findings are as follows:(1)Results of correlation analyses suggest that cognitive deixis is positively correlated with customers’ purchase intention in positive online reviews,P=0.007/0.008 < 0.01.And perceptual deixis,temporal deixis,spacial deixis,relational deixis and sums of them in positive online reviews are positively correlated with customers’ purchase intention,correlated coefficients of which are 0.565,0.509,0.493,0.665 and 0.736.While in positive online reviews of i-Phones,correlated coefficients are 0.528,0.483,0.396,0.575 and 0.699,which are also positively correlated.Whereas,cognitive deixis in negative online reviews are negatively correlated with customers’ purchase intention,P=0.003/0.006<0.01.Correlated coefficients in negative online reviews of Nike sports shoes are-0.579,-0.443,-0.417,-0.652 and-0.719,and those of negative online reviews of i-Phones are-0.572,-0.467,-0.406,-0.596 and-0.698 respectively,which suggest that cognitive deixis is negatively correlated with customers’ purchase intention in negative online reviews.And results of paired sample T-tests and semi-structured interviews further suggest conclusions of correlation analyses make sense.(2)Results of Paired sample T-tests reveal that valances of online reviews could partly impact pragmatic functions of cognitive deixis on customers’ purchase intention.And for perceptual deixis,modality,appellations and evaluative words,P=0.000<0.01.Difference values between positive online reviews and negative online reviews are-1.069,-0.971,-0.951 and-0.127,and those of i-Phones are-1.039,-1.010,-0.118 and-0.118,that is,pragmatic functions of perceptual deixis,modality,appellations and evaluative words on customers’ purchase intention are stronger in negative online reviews.(3)Results of Paired sample T-tests suggest customers’ purchase intention would not be impacted by product types in that P>0.05,suggesting product types have no influences on pragmatic functions of cognitive deixis on customers’ purchase intention.To summarize,both data and semi-structured interviews of the present study have suggested cognitive deixis in online reviews could impact customers’ purchase intention.And cognitive deixis is positively correlated with customers’ purchase intention in positive online reviews,while cognitive deixis is negatively correlated with customers’ purchase intention in negative online reviews.In addition,valances of online reviews could partly impact pragmatic functions of cognitive deixis on customers’ purchase intention.