The Effect Of Temporal Distance, Social Distance And Commentary Types On Purchasing Decision

Internet consumers online shopping decision-making is a complicated process, which is normally affected by many factors, thus which factors are influencing and how they are influencing the purchase decision is worth in-depth study. For example, Internet consumers have different perceptions (be it abstract, overall and general or specific, partial and detailed) from information like previous consumers’reviews and other information, do the different perceptions affect their decision-making in the same way? Another situation, whether the purchasing is in the near future or in the far future, or when comments from someone similar to the consumer or not similar to them, do these differences also have the same influence in decision-making? There are few previous studies about how these factors together affecting Internet customers’purchasing decisions, hence the development of e-commerce calls urgently for research on influences of psychological distance and network comments on consumers’purchasing decisions.Network comments affect consumers’decisions, to be more specific, the commentary has significant influence on consumer purchasing decisions. Based on the Construal Level Theory (CLT), this paper categorized online commentary into two types:one expresses subjective feeling and the other describes the objective attributes. According to initial findings from home and abroad traditional market, when the psychological distance is comparatively far, consumers tend to use the high construal level to characterize the target object or event. Vice versa.Based on previous research, in the context of e-commerce environment, this paper introduces consistency/matching theory to explain the internal mechanisms of online consumers’psychological distance and different types of commentaries affect the online shopping decisions. Through two situationalsimulated experiments about different types of online goods, this paper explores the influences on consumers’purchasing decisions brought out by temporal distance and commentary types, social distance and commentary types, respectively.According to the experiments, findings can be summarized as below:1. When consumers are faced with a far future consumption, purchasing decisions are significantly affected more by the comments which are expressing subjective feelings; while when consumers facing a near-future consumption, comments describe the properties influence the purchasing decisions more significant.2. When the social distance between consumers and commenters are far, consumers purchasing decisions are significantly affected more by the comments which are expressing subjective feelings; whereas the distance is close, comments describe the properties influence the purchasing decisions more significant.This paper provides a theoretical basis for studying online consumers’decision-making process, and also offers applicable guidance for enterprises to develop online information management and control mechanisms as well as to choose appropriate online marketing strategy.