Research On The Spillover Effect Of Peceived Online Products Information Deception

With the rapid development of online shopping,the Internet has brought richer products and lower price to consumers,but it also has a negative impact on consumers:deception is more common and serious in the network environment.Deception is not a new phenomenon,but network technology has greatly affected the deception environment.Network technology makes the seller’s identify difficult to authenticate,widened the scope of the influence of deception,reduce the cost of deception and consumers become more difficult to defend their rights.Internet is considered to be a fertile ground for deception(Xiao&Benhasat,2011).Research has shown that consumers concern about product information most when online shopping,and the misrepresentation of product statements is one of the most common forms of online deception.Therefore,it is necessary to investigate the perceived deception of online product information.Some scholars have been studied perceived deception and explored the definition,the antecedents and the consequences of perceived deception.However,the existing literature has the following shortcomings:(1)No matter the antecedents of perceived deception,or the influence of perceived deception,most research ignores the situation of continuous information presentation,and do not investigate the impact of previous product information on subsequent product information.(2)Existing literature focuses on the negative effects of perceived deception,such as weakening consumers’ trust,reducing consumers’ purchase intention,negatively affecting customer satisfaction and customer loyalty,and neglects the possible positive effects of perceived deception.(3)The spillover effect of perceived deception in the offline advertising industry has been confirmed,but whether it will occur online is still undecided.Scholars argue that consumers’ experience of shopping online and offline is different,and online purchase mode is quite distinct from that in offline environment,too.Therefore,it is necessary to study the spillover effect of perceived online products information deception.The purpose of this study is to explore the mediating mechanism and regulating variables of the spillover effects of perceived deception in the context of continuous online product information presentation.It includes the following points:(1)Verify whether there is a negative spillover effect when shop online and explore the mediating mechanism of the spillover effect.(2)Investigate whether there is a positive effect on perceived deception when searching product information online,and what are the mediating and regulating variables?(3)Verify the spillover effect of perceived deception in different shopping scenarios.This study has both theoretical and practical significance.In theory,this paper applies the theory of assimilation and contrast effects to explain how consumers’ perception of previously presented product information influence subsequent product information judgment online,which has never been concerned in previous studies.Therefore,this study extends the assimilation and contrast effects to the online product information field and complements the theoretical study of consumers’ perceived deception.Secondly,this paper analyzes the positive effects of perceived deception on consumers purchase intention,and supplement the literature of perceived deception’s influence,which will further improve the effect of perceived deception.Finally,this paper explores the mechanism and the boundary of the negative spillover effect about online perceived deception,which is a useful supplement to the existing research on the spillover effect.In practice,the conclusions of this paper are of practical value to E-commerce platforms,online merchants and consumers.For E-commerce platforms,it helps them to recognize the important impact of perceived deception,and to further think about how to strictly control the presentation of product information from businesses.For online merchants,it helps them to strongly appreciate the impact of perceived deception,and to avoid being affected by immoral businesses.For consumers,it is helpful for them to understand the influence mechanism of perceived deception,and to consume as rational as possible.This paper adopts experimental method,taking consumers’ perceived deception of online product information as the object of study,aiming at exploring the mechanism and boundary conditions of consumers perceived deception spillovers in online environment.The paper includes a pre-experiment and five formal experiments,all of which are tested through SPSS21.0.In order to ensure the stability of the experimental results,the study used three different ways to manipulate the independent variable perceived deception,and two different methods to manipulate regulating variable cognitive effort which is also measured by scales.First,the validity of the three manipulations of the independent variable perception deception was verified by pre-experiment.Then,we tested the negative spillover effect of perceived online products information deception and its mechanism through experiment 1 and experiment 2.Besides,experiment 2 preliminarily verified the moderating effect of cognitive effort through the measurement of cognitive needs.From experiment 3 to experiment 5,the regulating role of cognitive effort and the mediating role of perceived substitutability were tested.In the last three experiments,based on the preliminary validation of cognitive effort in experiment 2,we explored the moderating effect of cognitive effort by manipulating consumers’ cognitive ability(Experiment 3)and cognitive motivation(Experiment 4 and Experiment 5).Besides,experiment 5 investigated the robust of the experimental results by considering searching product information from different e-commerce platforms.Through experiments and empirical test,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)Perceived deception has negative spillover effects in online environment;(2)Trust plays a mediating role in the negative spillover effect of perceived deception.(3)Cognitive effort plays a regulatory role in the spillover effects’ direction of perceived deception.Specifically,perceived deception has negative spillover effect in conditions with low cognitive effort.That means the higher consumers perceived deception of online product information presented previously,the lower the purchasing intention of subsequent presented product.In contrast,perceived deception has positive spillover effect in conditions with high cognitive effort.That means the higher consumers perceived deception of online product information presented previously,the higher the purchasing intention of subsequent presented product.(4)Perceived substitutability plays a mediating role in the positive effects of perceived deception.With high cognitive effort,consumers perceive more substitutable of subsequent presented products,and therefore more willing to buy them.This study enriches the theoretical literature of product information and perceived deception,and is also a useful supplement to the theoretical application of assimilation and contrast effects.The theoretical contribution of this thesis is shown in three aspects:(1)This paper explores the consumers perceived deception in the continuous presentation of online product information.The previous literature,whether it is about the research of product information,or the study of perceived deception,ignores the situation of continuous information.In the online shopping environment,the continuous presentation of product information is a common phenomenon.This paper is an analysis of consumers’perception deception in the context of continuous product information,which will make up for the shortcomings of the previous literature.(2)This paper finds that consumers’perceived deception of product information will also have a positive impact.Previous studies have shown that the impact of consumers perceived deception is negative.However,this paper finds that consumers with high cognitive effort has stronger purchase intention of subsequent products while perceived more deception on previously presented product information in online environment,and perceived substitutability plays a mediating role in it.In addition to negative effects,consumers perceived deception also brings positive benefits.The conclusion of this thesis enriches the study of perceived deception,and makes the theoretical literature more comprehensive on the influence of perceived deception.(3)This paper extends the spillover effect of perceived deception to the online scenario.Darke&Ritchie(2007)has studied the traditional advertising industry and found that there is a spillover effect on consumers’ perceived deception.However,whether the conclusion of research in the offline environment is suitable for online environment or not has not been determined.This paper extends the research findings of perception deception to online scenario,which is a useful supplement to previous research.