The Impact Of Curiosity On Online Impulse Buying

Impulse buying is a common phenomenon in people’s daily consumption.In recent years,with the rapid development of mobile Internet and e-commerce,the phenomenon of online impulse buying is becoming more and more common.Researchers begin to pay attention to and study online impulse buying.From the existing studies,researchers mainly focus on the factors influencing online impulse buying,and provide reference value for the construction of appropriate marketing methods.Advertising,as a kind of marketing strategy,was widely used in the early development of Internet commerce.However,the current research lacks an in-depth exploration of the role of advertisements that arouse consumers’ curiosity in generating online impulse buying behavior from the perspective of consumer cognition.In addition,there are few researches on the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of the influence of curiosity on consumers’ online impulse buying.Therefore,this study aims to first explore the relationship between consumers’ curiosity and online impulse buying from the perspective of S-O-R theory of environmental psychology,and then use experimental method to further explore the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of the influence of curiosity on consumers’ online impulse buying.This paper includes two studies.The first study includes a preliminary experiment and a formal experiment.The preliminary experiment uses a questionnaire to preliminarily explore the relationship between consumers’ curiosity and online impulse buying,which provides a basis for subsequent research.The formal experiment used a single-factor(curiosity VS.control)inter-subject experiment to explore the effect of curiosity on online impulse buying,using the fictional consumption scenario used in Zeelenberg’s study,and to examine the causal chain model from consumer curiosity to positive expectations and product attitudes,and finally to online impulse buying.Study2 verifies the moderating effect of time distance on the above model based on the results of Study 1.The experiment was conducted with 2(curiosity vs.control group)x 2(time distance: close VS.Remote)inter-subject design.The two findings are as follows:1.In the preliminary experiment of Study 1,consumer curiosity significantly positively predicted online impulse buying.2.In the formal experiment of study 1,curiosity influenced online impulse buying.The level of online impulse buying in the curiosity primed group was significantly higher than that in the control group;The positive expectation and product attitude of consumers completely mediate between curiosity and online impulse buying,respectively.In addition,positive expectation and product attitude can also influence curiosity and online impulse buying through chain mediation.3.In the formal experiment of study 2,temporal duration has a moderating effect on curiosity and online impulse buying.Compared with far temporal duration,consumers in near temporal duration are more likely to make online impulse purchases driven by curiosity.In addition,temporal duration plays a regulating role between positive expectation and online impulse buying.Compared with far temporal duration,consumers in near temporal duration are more likely to make online impulse buying under the influence of positive expectation.