Research On The Effects Of Reference Points On Online Consumers’ Puchasing Decisions

Along with the rapid development of electronic commerce, online shopping has been widely adopted by Chinese consumers in recent years. As a new business model, it eliminates the limitation from time and geography, decreases the exchange procedure, and enhances business efficiency. In the new network market, besides factors of price, product quality and services, there are some new factors that will influence online consumers’purchasing decisions. In order to achieve e-commerce success, it is important to explore the influential factors for online consumers’purchasing decision.Research on online consumer’s references points for purchasing decisions will be significant for consumer’s rational buying and market efficiency. Specifically speaking, if consumers take a reference point as the basis, the result may be regarded as positive, but if consumers take another factor as reference point, it may lead to negative results. This dissertation studies the online consumer’s reference points for purchasing decision with both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Firstly, based on literature reviews, it uses consumers interview to identify the key reference points for online consumers, including product price, framing effect, product brand attributes, product evaluation, time, individual preferences and consumer targets. The study found that online consumers in China is not sensitive to online promotion and product delivery time, thus we eliminate online promotion reference points and buying time reference point. Secondly, based on these reference points for online consumers, online consumers’ purchasing decision concept model was constructed and related research hypothesis was proposed. Thirdly, based on literature and research results, the research scale was designed. After the validity analysis and reliability analysis of questionnaire, questionnaire items were revised and final formal questionnaire were produced. Fourthly, we used PASW Statistics18.0and AMOS17.0software to analyze the data and used the structural equation model to verify the model. The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) The formation mechanism of reference points for online consumers’purchasing decisionBased on the expectation theory, this study explored the formation mechanism of reference points for online consumers via interviews and empirical research methods. In the internet market environment, we found there are two types of reference points for consumer’purchasing decision, namely explicit reference points and implicit ones. Explicit reference points includes price, framing effect, product brand attribute and product reviews. Implicit reference points include the target and consumers’ preference.(2) Effects of reference points on online consumers’ perceived benefits Empirical research on effects of reference points on online consumers’ perceived benefits found that, there are five reference points that are positively related to online consumers’purchasing decision, including price, framing effect, product brand attributes, product reviews and consumer’s preferences.(3) Effects of reference points on online consumers’perceived lossEmpirical research on effects of reference points on online consumers’ perceived loss found that there are four reference points that are negatively related to online consumers’purchasing decisions, including price, framing effect, product brand attribute and consumers’ preferences.The above studies clarified the relationship between different reference points, online consumers’ perceived benefits, perceived loss and consumer attitude and purchase intentions. It provides advices for electronic commerce industry, enriches the research on Internet consumer’s purchase decision behavior, and therefore promotes the healthy and stable development of the electronic commerce industry.The innovative points of this research are mainly embodied in the following aspects:(1) It empirically sorted out the formation mechanism of reference points for purchase decision in China through interview and empirical study. It adds value to the theory of reference points in online marketing area and uses empirical study to support the findings.(2) This study adopted the online consumers’perceived benefits and perceived loss from reference points as intermediary variables, and tested the related hypothesis using structural equation model. It provides guidance for internet marketing in China.(3) Based on the existing literature, this study analyses reference points, consumers’ perceived benefit, perceived loss and consumer purchase decision-making into a unified framework, and explored the relationships between them. It enriches the research of electronic commerce market field.