Involved In Purchase Decisions And Cognitive Closure Need To Network

In recent years, the dramatic development of electronic commerce is relying onthe Internet. Favored by merchants and consumers, online retail market networkpurchase decisions also become hot topics in the study of consumer decision making.Online buying decision was emerged under the background of internet. Consumerscarefully evaluate product, brand or service attributes, and have a routine choice, withthe least amount of cost for purchasing to meet the need of a particular product.Compared with traditional purchase decisions, the network consumption is a kindof brand-new business model, consumers through internet to retrieve productinformation, and through the electronic orders issued a shopping request.Communication between consumers and salers is less, but more consumer informationsearch, evaluation and comparison. So the online purchase decisions is closer to theinformation processing, which influenced by individual cognitive factors. From theperspective of cognitive psychology, consumer purchase decision making isinformation processing about problem solving. Some studies have shown thatvariables reflecting the cognitive machining ability, motivation and opportunity haveimportant influence on decision makers. Consumers affected by individual cognitivecharacteristics will choose different strategies in information processing. Thisresearch explored how need for closure （NFC） influence purchase decisioninformation processing on online.Two experiments were designed to discuss the effect of NFC in networkpurchase decisions using information board technology. With133college studentsand graduate students as subjects, experiment1explored the influence of cognitiveclosure need and involvement (high and low involvement) on online purchasedecision information processing using scale measuring way manipulated cognitiveclosure. Based on experiment1, experiment2used115undergraduate students andgraduate students as subjects, adopting closed time limit trigger subjects’ cognitiveclosure need to further verify the influence of NFC and involvement on informationprocessing of network purchase decision. The dependent variables of the twoexperiments are search time, information search and search depth, search pattern,search variability and search compensatory, subjective confidence of decision making.The results showed that:(1) The NFC had effect on online purchase decision. Those who have high NFC would use rough information processing, and tend to use heuristic processing and thecompensatory information retrieval strategies. While those who have low NFC woulduse deep information processing, and tend to use analytical processing andcompensation information retrieval strategy. Compared with low cognitive closedthose high cognitive closed have higher confidence in decision.(2) The involvement had effect on network consumers purchase decisioninformation processing. Compared with the low level of involvement, under highlevel of involvement, consumers have a deeper information processing. They inclinedto adopt analytical processing and compensating the retrieval strategy.(3) Involvement and NFC had interaction effect on online purchase decisioninformation processing. Under the high level involvement, high NFC made decisionsslowly, decision-making took longer, and subjective confidence levels significantlylower than the low level of involvement in decision-making. Low NFC had rapid theinformation retrieval speed, use less time and more compensatory strategies(4) As a kind of motivation, by setting the time pressure to induce NFC and bythe measurement as individual characteristics, those two methods almost got sameconclusions. So two ways could check each other.