The Effect Of Consciousness Level And Involvement On Consumer Decision-making

When facing complex decision, people usually think consciously with deliberation approach to decision making. However, due to limited processing capacity, couscous thinking is not the best strategy on complex decision, while unconscious thinking has greater potential to shine. Based on previous study and theory, this article tends to investigate the effect of conscious level and involvement on complex decision making.This paper contains four parts. Part 1 is a review of relative theory and previous study. Part 2 is empirical study with 2 experiments. Experiment 1 employs classical unconscious theory experiment paradigm to explore the effect of conscious level and involvement on decision accuracy and decision satisfaction. The data shows that, (1) the main effect of conscious level on decision accuracy and decision satisfaction is significant. Subjects engaged in unconscious thinking have better performance in decision accuracy and decision and higher decision satisfaction. (2)The main effect of involvement is not significant both in decision accuracy and decision satisfaction. The interaction between conscious level and involvement is not significant either. Experiment 2 adopts a different information presenting manner. The results of experiment 2 are quite different from experiment 1. (3)The superiority of unconscious thinking on decision accuracy no longer exists and the main effect of conscious level is not significant. (4)However, the main effect of involvement is significant, and subjects under high involvement have better performance. The interaction between conscious level and involvement is not significant either. (5)As for decision satisfaction, the main effects of conscious level and involvement are both significant. Subjects in unconscious group have highest decision satisfaction. High involvement subjects have higher decision satisfaction. General discussion is put forwarded based on the two experiments and previous study at the end of Part 2. This article ends by discussing the limitation of the study and future direction.