Effect Of Consumer Guilt On Repurchase Intention Under Online Shopping Situation

In recent years,on the one hand,with the vigorous development of Internet finance,the network economy has shown an unprecedented prosperity.As an indispensable trading platform,online shopping has gradually become an important part of our life.As the convenience of the Internet,more and more consumers choose to shop online,making online shopping gradually rise to a new stage of development.On the other hand,as the traditional business transfer from offline to online,the competition between enterprises shift from offline to line,and the competition between e-commerce enterprises become increasingly fierce.In the face of fierce competition,the electronic commerce enterprise do not show weakness,while,they use a variety of promotional activities to attract the attention of consumers,which stimulates their network shopping needs greatly.Under the convenient shopping conditions and network promotion stimulation,it is very easy for consumers to purchase irrationally,which will lead consumers to feel guilty.That is how the well-known ?shopaholic? appears.In addition,in terms of network shopping environment,consumer repurchase intention is an important factor of e-commerce business development.Scholars‘ study found that consumer guilt,as a kind of important negative emotions consumers perceived,may have an important impact on consumer behavior.So the e-commerce enterprises are extremely concerned about whether repurchase will happen after the consumers feel guilty.After review the relevant literature in the field of consumer guilt,we found that in the field of marketing,according to the cause of consumer guilt,consumer guilt can be divided into marketer-induced and not marketer-induced consumer guilt.Through the literature we found that previous studies have focusedonthe marketer-induced guilt,and researches about not marketer-induced consumer‘s guilt are relatively few.In addition,the focus of the scholars in the existing research is about offline shopping behavior of consumers,while consumer guilty about online shopping situation are rarely involved.Furthermore,the effect of consumer guilt on their buying behavior is still in debate,and there is not unified conclusion about the relationship between consumer guilt and consumers repurchase intention.Therefore,it is necessary to build interpretation framework in theory to fully reflect the change process of psychological mechanism after consumer feeling guilt,so as to open the theoretical ?black box? about consumer guilt affecting consumer repurchase intention in the network context.Therefore,under the online shopping situation,based on the theoretical logic of consumer buying behavior theory and cognitive dissonance theory,combining advantages of attribution theory and construal level theory,this study build the theoretical model about consumer guilty affecting consumer online repurchase intention.On the one hand,using the theory of attribution to explain the main effect pathof consumer guilt affecting consumer online repurchase intention and the mediation effect of consumer response;on the other hand,using the theory of construal level to build moderating effect oftrust and customer experience,network transfer cost on the relationship between consumer guilt and consumer response and the relationship between consumer response and consumer repurchase intention.Adopting the method of convenience sampling,this study distributed 200 preliminary questionnaires in Qingdao and Beijing respectively,and we got 350 valid questionnaires.Revising the preliminary questionnaire through the exploratory factor analysis,we get the formal exploratory questionnaire which can measure consumer guilt,consumer response,consumer repurchase intention,customer experience,transfer cost and network trust.Then we distributed 1600 formal questionnaires in eight cities,and we got 1115 valid questionnaires with a valid rate of 91.39%.After the rigorous testing and collectionprocess,we test thehypothesis based on large sample survey data.According the empirical analysis by using multiple regression models and multiple delta method based on the theoretical assumptions in this study,we get the following conclusions:First,we found consumer guilt has a negative effect on consumer repurchase intention in online shopping environment.The conclusion shows that consumer guilt is an important inhibition factor for consumer repurchase in online shopping environment.Second,consumer guilt has a positive effect on consumer response.The empirical results show that consumer guilt has a positive effect on consumers‘ face behavior and consumer guilt has a positive effect on consumers‘ avoidance behavior.And the conclusions systematically analyze mechanism of consumer guilt affecting consumer response in network shopping environment.Third,consumer response has a mediation effect between the relationship of consumer guilt and consumer online repurchase intention,and consumer guilt will affect consumer repurchase intention through consumer response.We have found that,on the one hand,in the online shopping environment,consumer guilt will affect consumer online repurchase intention through consumers face behavior;on the other hand,consumer guilt will affect consumer online repurchase intention through consumer avoidance behavior.Fourth,customer experience has a moderating effect on the relationship between consumer guilt and consumer avoidance behavior.Customer experience does not have a moderating effect on the relationship between consumer guilt and consumers face behavior.This study found that entertainment experience and escapist experience have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between consumer guilt and consumer avoidance behavior,but entertainment experience and escapist experience do not have a moderating effect on the relationship between consumer guilt and consumer face behavior.Fifth,switching cost has a moderating effect on the relationship between consumer response and consumer repurchase intention.The empirical results show that on the one hand,consumers procedure switching cost and relationship switching cost have a negative moderating effect on the relationship between consumer face behavior and consumer repurchase intention,financial switching costs does not have a negative moderating effect on the relationship between consumer face behavior and consumer repurchase intention;on the other hand,consumers procedure switching cost and relationship switching cost have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between consumer avoidance behavior and consumer repurchase intention,financial switching costs does not have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between consumer avoidance behavior and consumer repurchase intentionSixth,online trust has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between the consumer face behavior and consumer avoidance behavior.This study shows that online trust has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between the consumer face behavior and consumer avoidance behavior in online shopping,namely when consumers have the trust,consumers face behavior would be converted to consumer avoidance behavior.Seventh,consumer guilt is a culture related concept.By comparing the difference of the impact of consumer guilt on consumer behavior between the north and the south,this study found that,in chinese context,the influence of consumer guilt on consumer behavior has obvious geographical and cultural differences.Based on these conclusions,we can get following contributions from this study:First,combining the consumer buying behavior theory,cognitive dissonance theory,attribution theory and construal level theory,this study analyzes deeply the mechanism about consumer guilt affecting consumer repurchase intention in the background of online shopping,which has certain contribution to extend consumers guilt research framework.Second,based on the mediation effect of consumers‘ different response types,this study open the theoretical ?black box? of consumer guilt affecting consumer repurchase intention.To a certain extent,this improves the study about consumer guilt on consumer behavior.Third,according to analyzing the moderating effect of customer experience on the relationship between consumer guilt and consumer response and the moderating effect of switching cost on the relationship between consumer response and consumer repurchase intention,and online trust deepening the inner mechanism between the consumers face behavior and consumer avoidance behavior,these improve the explanatory power of consumer guilt model on online shopping consumers "shopaholic" phenomenon.Forth,by comparing the difference of the impact of consumer guilt on consumer behavior between the north and the south,it expands the depth and breadth of consumer guilt researches.Moreover,from the conclusions in this study we can draw following practice implications for management:First,marketing managers should attach importance to and take measures to eliminate the negative effect on the consumer purchase intention which comes from online consumer guilt.In marketing practice,managers focus on how to stimulate and motivate consumers to buy more commodities online.But they ignore how to adjust and manage the guilty of consumers after shopping.Therefore,the enterprises should take active measures to try to eliminate the negative effects of consumer guilt after the online shopping.Second,marketing managers ought to make special marketing strategy to deal with different reactions caused by consumer guilt.On the one hand,when guilt feelings is produced after the consumer online shopping,if consumers decide to face,and marketing managers should adopt the corresponding strategy to help consumers overcome the guilt feelings and to achieve purpose of buying again.On the other hand,if consumers adopt avoidance strategy,managers need to help consumer to clarify the cause of avoidance and its restriction factors,to promote consumers‘ repurchase intention.Third,pay attention to consumer experience while online shopping.Marketing managers increase positive consumer experience in the network purchasing situation,to alleviate the adverse reactions derived of consumer guilt,and make them accept network and continue to buy again.Fourth,marketing managers should pay more attention to use procedure cost and relationship cost so as to increase the frequency of consumer‘ buying again online shopping.Switching cost is very important to control online consumers‘ behavior caused by consumer guilt.Fifth,marketing managers should attach importance to the cultivation of network trust of consumers,to weaken the unpleasant emotions in the consumer online shopping,and help them regard the legitimacy of online shopping behavior correctly.