The Influence Of The Characteristics Of Virtual Spokespersons On Consumers’ Impulse Buying Intention

Brand competition has gradually become an important part of market competition.Every brand tries to constantly improve its own brand competitiveness from various perspectives and aspects in order to stand firm in the market.Throughout the world’s most competitive brands,no exception will use spokesmen to convey brand values,attract consumers’ attention,and promote consumers to form a perception of brand image.However,as the speed of information dissemination on the Internet speeds up,real person endorsement shows disadvantages and brings unexpected risks to the brand.Therefore,virtual spokespersons are derived to replace real person endorsement and play a role between the brand and consumers.In addition,the development of the consumption era also makes consumers pay more and more attention to meet the current emotional needs,and the money sources from various channels such as "spend bai,borrow bai" also prompt consumers to make impulse purchase again and again.Therefore,how to improve consumers’ impulse buying intentions through virtual spokespersons is a topic of common concern for academics and brands.Based on the existing literature,this study used the correlation and professionalism of virtual spokespersons as independent variables to explore the relationship between them and impulse purchase intention.In order to explore the influence mechanism of the feature types of virtual spokesmen on consumers’ impulse buying intentions,this study also introduced product types and perceived risks as moderating variables,and verified the moderating role of product types and perceived risks in the process of virtual spokesmen’s characteristics influencing consumers’ impulse buying intentions through three experiments.The results show that :(1)both the virtual spokesmen with relevant characteristics and the virtual spokesmen with professional characteristics can significantly affect consumers’ impulse buying intentions,and compared with the virtual spokesmen with professional characteristics,the subjects have a higher degree of impulse buying intentions to the virtual spokesmen with relevant characteristics;(2)for real products,consumers are more willing to buy virtual spokespersons with relevant features than virtual spokespersons with professional features on impulse;For pleasure goods,consumers have more impulse buying intention for the virtual spokespersons of professional features than for the virtual spokespersons of relevant features.(3)in the context of low perceived risk,there was no significant difference in consumers’ impulse buying intentions to virtual spokespersons with relevant features and professional features;However,in the context of high perceived risk,compared with the virtual spokespersons of professional features,consumers are more willing to buy the virtual spokespersons of relevant features on impulse.