Research On The Influence Of The Ambivalent Attitude On Consumers' Purchase Decision

Consumer purchase decision-making process refers to the decision-making process of consumers' understanding of needs,information collection,selection of evaluation plans,implementation of purchase behavior,post-purchase processing and evaluation.The relationship between attitude and behavior is an old topic.Whether consumers' attitudes can be used to predict consumer behavior in the decision-making process has always been an academic and practical problem that needs to be solved urgently in the marketing academia and industry.Early research believed that attitudes have a good predictive power on behavior,such as favorable comments on consumer products leading to purchase behavior.However,with the continuous expansion of research,the prediction of attitudes on behavior has failed.Even individuals with the same attitude may produce different behaviors,such as dieters' differential purchase behaviors of high-calorie foods.In order to explain the relationship between attitude and behavior,scholars put forward the theory of attitude strength,that strong attitudes can predict behavior.Some characteristics of attitude have a negative impact on attitude strength,which in turn leads to a decline in the predictive power of attitudes on behavior.For example,praise for a consumer product may be accompanied by Features such as uncertainty and unimportance.Ambivalent attitudes refer to the existence of both positive and negative evaluations of stimulus targets.This dualistic attitude has an impact on the strength of the attitude,which in turn affects consumer decision-making behavior.In today's era of advanced network information,explosive information is likely to induce ambivalent attitudes among consumers,and cause consumers to have conflicting evaluations of product brands and product features,that is,ambivalent attitudes.So,how do ambivalent consumers handle information?Are consumers more satisfied when making decisions?And how do consumers feel after making the decision?These issues are also key issues that affect the decision-making process of consumers,but there is little attention in existing theories.Examining the impact of consumers' ambivalent attitudes on the decision-making process not only expands the research on the factors affecting the decision-making process and the relationship between attitudes and behaviors,but also provide guidance for marketing practitioners to predict the various stages of the consumer decision-making process through consumer attitudes.This paper focuses on four research questions:One is to integrate the related theories of attitude-behavior relations,to compare the similarities and differences between theories,and to propose an integrated framework for the theory of attitude-behavior;The second is to explore the conflicting influence of ambivalent attitudes on selective information contact.Existing studies have found the dual effects of conflicting attitudes on selective information contact.This article introduces information processing and believes that conflicting attitudes and information processing influence the intensity of attitudes and lead to the conflicting results of selective information contact.The third is to study the impact of conflicting attitudes on decision satisfaction.Impact,this article focuses on the impact of ambivalent attitudes on decision-making satisfaction in the context of different number of choices;the fourth is to explore the impact of ambivalent attitudes on post-decision self-evaluation.There is a lack of research on the relationship between ambivalent attitudes and post-decision psychology.This article believes that conflicting attitudes and decision-making difficulties affect individuals' perceptions of the outcome of decision-making through uncertainty.This article mainly uses research methods such as questionnaire survey method,experimental method and statistical analysis method to improve the robustness and validity of research conclusions.The questionnaire survey method is mainly used to determine the experimental materials in the fourth and fifth parts,and the experimental method is used to test the theoretical models in the fourth,fifth and sixth parts.The statistical analysis method is the technical support of this article.Methods to process and analyze primary survey and experimental data.This article mainly draws three research conclusions:First,ambivalent attitudes and information processing affect consumers' selective information contact.In the process of collecting information,individuals always consciously or unconsciously choose to accept information that is the same as their own position,and avoid information that is contradictory.This kind of selective information contact tendency is related to the strength of attitude,while the influence of ambivalent attitudes as an important structural feature of attitude on selective information contact is controversial.Information processing theory provides a possible explanation for this.The results of one or two experimental studies show that in the process of selective information contact,consumers' ambivalent attitudes and information processing methods have a dual regulatory effect.When consumers use heuristic information processing,the ambivalent attitudes weaken the selective information contact;When consumers use systematic information processing,ambivalent attitudes enhance selective information contact.Second,ambivalent attitudes and the number of choices affect decision-making satisfaction.When consumers have both positive and negative evaluations of a certain stimulus target,the ambivalent attitude affects the relationship between the number of choices and satisfaction.The two experimental results of Study 2 show that the influence of the number of choices on satisfaction is achieved through the level of decision-making difficulty.When the number of choices affects the level of decision-making difficulty,choice overload will occur.Ambivalent attitudes have a moderating effect on the relationship between the level of decision-making difficulty and satisfaction.For those with higher ambivalent attitudes,choose "more is better",and the increase in the number of choices will increase consumer satisfaction;on the contrary,for those with lower ambivalent attitudes,choose "just enough",The increase in the number of choices reduces consumer satisfaction.Third,ambivalent attitudes not only affect information search,attitude formation and decision-making behavior,but also affect self-evaluation after decision-making.Study 3 constructed a model of the relationship between ambivalent attitudes and self-evaluation based on the intermediary effect of uncertainty,the level of decision-making difficulty and the dual-adjusting effect of result valence.Through three experiments,it was found that ambivalent attitudes have a positive effect on self-evaluation.The intermediary process that influences self-evaluation through uncertainty is regulated by the level of decision-making difficulty and result valence.Ambivalent attitudes and decision-making difficulty level affect uncertainty,and uncertainty and result valence affect self-evaluation.Due to the separation effect of uncertainty,conflicting attitudes and decision-making difficulty levels have conflicting dual effects on self-evaluation.When an individual obtains a negative result,compared to an individual with a low level of decision-making difficulty and a high level of decision-making difficulty,ambivalent attitudes have a positive impact on self-evaluation through uncertainty;when an individual obtains a positive result,compared with a high level of decision-making difficulty,Individuals with low decision-making difficulty levels,ambivalent attitudes have a positive impact on self-evaluation through uncertainty.Based on the above research conclusions,this article proposes three suggestions for the marketing practices of enterprises:First,in the stage of collecting information for consumers,the "primary cause" effect should be strengthened,and effective consumer information processing methods should be stimulated according to the level of conflicting attitudes;In the consumer decision-making stage,the number of choices should be reasonably determined to reduce decision-making difficulties,thereby increasing consumer satisfaction;third,in the consumer decision-making stage,multiple perspectives appropriately trigger consumer conflicting perceptions,intentions and behaviors,which can improve post-decision Psychological feelings,promote repeat purchases.This article has three aspects of academic innovation:First,a theoretical model of the relationship between the ambivalent attitudes and consumer decision-making based on attitude strength theory,planned behavior theory and decision process theory is constructed.Existing studies generally use a theory as a framework based on the research problem,and lack comprehensive research on attitude strength theory,planned behavior theory,and decision process theory.This article proposes a framework of three theories by combing and comparing the related theories of attitude.Planned behavior theory and attitude strength theory are part of decision process theory.Attitude strength theory is the internal mechanism of planned behavior theory and decision process theory.At the same time,planned behavior theory is the boundary condition of attitude strength theory.Second,explore the consumer decision-making process from the perspective of ambivalent attitudes.Incorporating ambivalent attitudes into consumer purchasing decision theory,explaining its definition,structure,and influence on individual psychology and behavior is still a new field in social psychology and consumer behavior.This article systematically sorts out and analyzes the related researches on ambivalent attitudes,especially the conflicting effects of ambivalent attitudes at various stages in decision-making,and provides references for academic research on ambivalent attitudes.Third,use attitude strength theory to explain the impact of ambivalent attitudes on consumer decision-making processes.This article regards ambivalent attitudes as one of the indicators of attitude strength,discusses the dual role of ambivalent attitudes from the perspective of the relationship between ambivalent attitudes and attitude strengths,and uses the results of attitude strength as the internal psychological mechanism for ambivalent attitudes to affect individual decision-making processes to integrate contradictions.The research on attitudes to the decision-making process makes up for the lack of existing research on ambivalent attitudes.