Research On The Influence Of Competitor Product Referrals On Consumers’ Purchase Intention

As a traditional way for enterprises to sell products to customers,personal selling still plays an important role in today’s society.A large number of offline and online enterprises need to rely on front-line sales staff to promote products.However,selling is not easy to complete.With the increase of information transparency of products,prices,and so on,the difficulty and challenge of product selling are increasing.Therefore,it is very important to choose appropriate selling tactics for improving marketing performance.Considering that many enterprises differ in their product specialization,this research divides the products that enterprises operate and sell into two categories--focal products and non-focal products.Focal products are the main products that enterprises operate and sell,which can bring major competitive advantages and sales profits for enterprises.Non-focal products are ancillary sales of enterprises,which augment the focal product.As is known to all,salespeople often recommend better non-focal products of another competitive enterprise to customers while they try to sell a focal product.However,the influence mechanism and boundary conditions behind this strategy remain in question.With these research questions in mind,in this thesis,the authors investigate such a sales strategy——competitor product referrals.Competitor product referrals,a sales strategy by which one increases consumers’ purchase intention of a focal product by referring consumers to a competitor that offers an excellent non-focal product,while stating that competitor stores have more advantages.Given that the competitor product referrals lead consumers to consider that the sales staff thinks about their purchase from their perspective,this thesis adapts empathy to the concept model verifying consumers’ perceptions of empathy mediate role,and introduces the tie strength between consumers and sales staff as well as the regulatory focus to the concept model examining how they moderate the effect of competitor product referrals on purchase intention of focal products.Through the statistical analysis of the experimental questionnaire data,the results of three studies show that competitor product referrals can increase consumers’ purchase intention of a focal product by improving consumers’ perceived empathy to salespeople,thus benefiting sellers.In addition,the research also shows that when the relationship between consumers and salespeople is strong,competitor product referrals can remain working.However,this positive effect is diminished in the state of weak ties.Moreover,the regulatory focus of consumers will also moderate the effect of competitor product referrals.Specifically,for promotion-focused consumers,compared with no competitor product referrals,competitor product referrals helps to improve the consumer’s willingness to buy the focal promoted product.For promotion-focused consumers,competitor product referrals instead reduce the consumer’s purchase intention of the focal promoted product.The in-depth discussion of the impact of competitor product referrals on the purchase intention of focal products not only enriches the existing literature on personal selling strategy and perceived empathy but also expands the internal meaning of competitor product referrals.In addition,this thesis also has some certain implications and enlightenment for the daily work of sales staff and sales management of enterprises.This study helps salespeople grasp new selling tactics and aids salespeople identify the opportunity of employing competitor product referrals.It can also provide new ideas for the selection and skill training of enterprise salespeople.