Research On The Influence Of Money And Time Concept On Consumers’ Choice Between Hedonic And Utilitarian Products

In daily life,people are always faced with plenty of choices between hedonic products and utilitarian products.The results of these consumption choices will not only affect the consumers themselves,but also affect companies and the whole society.In recent years,because of the development of online shopping,consumers often understand products through the shopping interface,so the impact of environmental factors such as pictures and text in the shopping interface on consumers has become more and more important.The information about time and money contained in these pictures and words often influence an individual’s behavior unknowingly.Existing studies mainly focus on the influence of environmental factors such as money concept and time concept on individuals’ choice of hedonic goods and utilitarian goods,but paid little attention to the psychological mechanism behind such influence.Previous studies have shown that double-entry mental accounting record "pain of payment" and "happiness of consumption",and correspond to two association coefficients,pain passivation coefficient β and happiness weakening coefficient α.Individuals in different situations will have different association coefficients and their behavior will be influenced through association coefficients.Based on the two-channel mental account theory,this study explores the psychological mechanism of people’s consumption choices under the influence of money concepts and time concepts.In this study,college students were selected as subjects,and the priming method of scrambled sentence test was adopted.Two experiments were conducted to find out the mediating effect of double-entry mental accounting on consumers’ choice under money priming and time priming.A single factor(concept priming)inter-subject design was used in experiment 1 to find out the mediating effect of double-entry mental accounting on consumers’ choice under different concept priming(money concept and time concept).A total of 126 subjects were recruited.In experiment 2,a hybrid design of 3(concept priming)×3(payment order)was used to explore the mediating effect of double-entry mental accounting on consumption choice under different payment order and different concept priming situations,and 183 subjects were recruited.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Money priming in the instant payment situation will affect the double-entry mental accounting.It will reduce the pain passivation coefficient β,so that consumers choose real goods.(2)Payment order and money concept have interactive effects on consumption choice.When money is activated,individuals tend to choose utilitarian goods in the instant payment situation,while the control group does not show such tendency.(3)The order of payment and the concept of money have an interactive effect on the happiness weakening coefficient.In post payment situation,when the concept of money is primed,people’s happiness weakening coefficient is smaller;When there was no priming concept,people’s happiness decreased even more.(4)Payment order and time priming have an interactive effect on consumption choice.When time concept is primed,individuals tend to choose utilitarian goods in the instant payment situation,while the control group does not show such a tendency.This study explores the mediating effect of double-entry mental accounting between consumers’ choice and various kinds of environmental factors.It is the first time to use double-entry mental accounting as a psychological mechanism to explain the influence of money concept and time concept on consumption choice,and expands the research scope of double-entry mental accounting.And the results of the study provide a reference for e-commerce merchants who also sell utilitarian goods to carry out different marketing.